These letters between Auster and Coetzee--two of my favorite authors--offered with neither introduction nor explanation beyond their agreement to write to each other on the cover leaf, is an honest and transparent baring of the friendship between these two men as they work through (at first with humor and odd speculation, later with some more intimate revelations or worries) a wide variety of topics: war, history, sports, travel, time, aging, writing, etc. I felt as awkward reading them as perhaps they first felt in their pro forma writing of them, but as the book develops, so do their comfort levels and the reader's. I found myself looking forward to their musings each day and was growing anxious of ending the read.  It does end, however, all too quickly, and I have seen no later collections of a friendship which has (one supposes) continued and grown. I love, however, how it ends, where the final letters leave them, and I closed the book feeling envious of what they have discovered and what they face. For fans of writing, for fans of either writer, for those just interested in a peek behind the scenes of what appears to us as celebrity, for a correspondence of relaxed and occasionally mistaken musings, strongly recommend.

The language was very beautiful