Optional/Make up : EL & IC

This has been my favorite book this semester. I like the ending, although I think finding the closure is optional to the reader: and if optional, then stretch for it. On the last page, 326, I noted this word to be key: backward.

Within the series of everything going backwards:  Backward to the subway, backward to reading the NY Times, backward whistling, there is a profound statement that lacks this direction: He would’ve gotten into bed with me.

Then back to backward with the stars, the talking, and then : I’d have said ‘Dad?’ backward, which would have sounded the same as ‘Dad’ forward. This is the only time in this backward page that forward is an option.

After the last page of text there is a flip book. Of a man falling backward, away from the ground and back into his building. What’s important to note though is that Oskar changed this order. On pg 325, “I ripped the pages out of the book. I reversed the order, so the last one was first, and teh first was last. When I flipped through them, it looked like the man was floating up through the sky”.

So maybe Oskar has found closure. He’s ok with his Mom falling in love again at the end, so some barrier seems to have been brought down. He put his pages of ‘Stuff that Happened to Me’ in a more hopeful order. Dad backward is Dad forward, and I feel like Oskar has finally understood his Dad to be a statement of someone he loved with fond memories that he misses, instead of Dad is no longer of a question: How did Dad die? Why did Dad say ‘are you there?’ 11 times, etc. etc.

Not sure. Here again I’m struggling trying to talk about this book.

Anyway… I have my own picture of New York. My entire family lives on Long Island, so going to Manhattan is a common occurence. This is May 2001 and I am standing on Liberty Island (when people were allowed to walk up into the crown of the Statue of Liberty and see quite a view – maybe even the 6th Borough…) Behind me are the Trade Towers, and the clouds around the towers remind me of a halo…