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Books like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
A visually inventive, deeply emotional labyrinth that balances breathless childhood curiosity with the crushing weight of collective tragedy. These 12 books are the closest matches in mood, pace and themes, with what each one shares with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
- bittersweet
- heartbreaking
- whimsical
- heavy
- 01
Everything Is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer
A hilarious, linguistically inventive road trip that slowly peels back its absurd layers to reveal a devastating core of historical grief.
- 02
Falling Man
Don DeLillo · 2007
A haunting, ash-dusted meditation on the sudden fracture of ordinary life and the lingering echoes of collective trauma.
- 03
The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt
A sprawling, grief-shadowed odyssey through the underworld of art and the messy, drug-hazed survival of a boy tethered to a single masterpiece.
- 04
Let the great world spin
Colum McCann
A sweeping, polyphonic love letter to a gritty 1970s New York, where disparate lives are briefly united by a single moment of impossible beauty.
- 05
I Survived The Attacks of September 11, 2001
Lauren Tarshis
A gripping, fast-paced plunge into a terrifying historical moment that balances intense survival action with a reassuring message of resilience.
- 06
This is where I leave you
Jonathan Tropper
A hilariously chaotic and deeply tender portrait of a dysfunctional family forced to sit in the same room with their grief and each other.
- 07
Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders
A dizzying, darkly hilarious, and profoundly moving chorus of voices exploring the unbearable weight of grief and the beauty of letting go.
- 08
The Book of Illusions
Paul Auster · 2002
A hypnotic, grief-soaked descent into the shadowy world of lost art and the illusions that keep us alive.
- 09
The leftovers
Tom Perrotta
A haunting, quietly devastating portrait of ordinary people trying to buy groceries and fall in love after the world has inexplicably broken.
- 10
Grief is the thing with feathers
Max Porter
A surreal, poetic, and darkly funny exploration of the chaotic shape that mourning takes in a shattered home.
- 11
Towers falling
Jewell Parker Rhodes
A tender, inquisitive exploration of how history we didn't live through still shapes the homes and hearts we inhabit today.
- 12
Eating animals
Jonathan Safran Foer
An urgent, deeply personal reckoning with the stories we tell ourselves about the food on our plates.
