The same book: Diana, this post is for you

Today I finished this book. It was eerily similar to the last book I read.


Both authors are my age, they both live in Brooklyn. I thought for sure they must be friends, because the novels seem to fairly obviously allude to one another. I imagined meeting Nicole Krauss, the author of The History of Love at a Q & A and brilliantly pointing out to her that in both her story and this other, the scenario appears wherein people who love one another hold onto string across bodies of water, so as to minimize their separation. What are the chances of that? Does she know Jonathan Safran Foer, and why are their books so much alike?

It turns out they know each other. Married to each other, in fact. I probably would have looked sort of dumb at the Q & A.

Has anyone read one or both of these books? They're both very well done and thought-provoking and entertaining. Exremely Loud and Incredibly Close is more of everything: more pretentious, more bad language, more funny, more unbelievable, more depressing, more post-modern, more emotionally-charged. I can't decide which one I like better, but perhaps since I very randomly ended up reading them back-to-back without knowing anything about them, and the authors turned out to be married to each other (who knew!) and they are essentially the same book, I don't need to pick a favorite.