This book was given to me as a holiday present from a friend, and at the time I knew the title and the author but had never gotten around to investigating the book for myself. Nicole Krauss is the wife of one of my absolute favorite authors, Jonathan Safran Foer. I was honestly a little afraid of reading the book. I made a snap judgement based on the title and cover of the book: I thought it looked sappy. I didn't want it to be sappy. I didn't want it to be like The Notebook. I didn't want my opinion of Foer to be tarnished by his taste in sappy women. But you know something? Krauss turned out to be an amazing writer. This is not at all sappy (sweet, if anything), this is not at all like The Notebook (these characters are not beautiful people doing beautiful things), and the writing is incredibly well-crafted, funny, and lovable. I love her now as much as I love Foer, and intend to read the rest of her works in the future.
I instantly fell in love with the first introduced character, Leo Gursky. He's old, he's Jewish, he's tired, but he wants as much validation of his existence as he can get from other people. I love his relationship with his old pal, Bruno. They're just great together. (I'm beginning to notice that I have an affinity for stories about old Jewish men. Who knew.)
Then there's another set of characters that get intertwined, but I'm not going into a plot summary here because it's so well done and I don't want to ruin the surprises and complexities in a simplified explanation. I would recommend this book to anyone, absolutely anyone, who's up for a good fiction work. It's not enormous, it's quick but filled with incredible content, and it's really touching in a multitude of ways. I loved it and I will probably read this multiple times in my life, because it's just worth reading again.
