The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The History of Love: A Novel
Book Review: by and when
Summary: 2 Stars
When you read this book. By tomarrow. If you want to be in the crowd. Literate. Present.
That is how this book is written. With little depth. By tricks and prepositions. And. The. One. Word. Sentence.
Is the
Tone.
Style.
Great?
Yes.
But I would hardly call this a
Good.
Book.
Just
Tricks. Of someone who is not. Too Clever. For me to see. Past.
Book Review: "I was a small part of something larger than myself"
Summary: 4 Stars
Ingenious, grand, and artistically coherent, Nicole Krauss' intellectually ambitious The History of Love takes the reader on a journey from Nazi occupied Eastern Europe, to the wild landscapes of South America and to the modern day metropolis of New York. A lost romance, a book called the History of Love, and a cantankerous old man desperately trying to connect with is writer son, are the threads that bind this strange, oblique, and technically complex work together. Full of literary, scientific and artistic illusions, The History of Love is challenging, cerebral, and also delicately vast in scope.
The story begins with Leo Gursky, a grumpy, bitter old man who is trying to eke out a living in a grubby old section of Manhattan. A locksmith by trade he broods constantly about his disappointed life, often seeking the company of his best friend Bruno who lives a solitary existence in an apartment upstairs. As a young man in Poland, Leo wrote stories to impress Alma, his beautiful childhood sweetheart for whom he named all of the women characters in one of the volumes of his work that he never got around to publishing. Before he immigrated to America he gave the manuscript to his best friend Litvinoff for safekeeping. Just before the Nazis invaded, Litvinoff escaped to Chile where he meets and marries a young Spanish girl called Rosa. Together with Rosa he eventually builds a new life, and finally manages to publish The History of Love in Spanish.
Alma, pregnant with Gursky's child also flees Poland for the U.S. but by the time he joins her five years later, she has married another man and has another child by him. Bitterly disappointed, Leo resorts to living a life in the darkness, spying on his son Isaac from a distance and scowling at the world. "We were locked in a state of mutual disgust. One day I realized I was on my way to being the sort of shmuck who poisoned pigeons. I was a human cancer." Most of the time Leo is so consumed by thoughts of Alma and his own death that he learns to put a wall up against such thoughts. Each new thing he learned about the world was a stone in that wall, "until the day I understood that I'd exiled myself from a place I could never go back to."
Inserted into Leo's narrative is the story of the intelligent and gifted fourteen-year-old Alma Singer. Alma idolizes Antoine de Saint-Exupery and has an affinity for memorizing scientific literature. She was also named after the characters in an obscure Chilean book called The History of Love, which her father gave to her mother just after they met. But her mother, having recently been commissioned to translate the work into English by an enigmatic, wealthy man, is still lonely and sad at the loss of her husband.
Worried and concerned, Alma begins a search for an appropriate new suitor, a search that leads to an investigation of The History of Love, the strange and beguiling book that is responsible for her name. She starts out looking for someone who could make her mother happy again, "now I was looking for something else too. About the woman I was named after, and about me."
The History of Love demands a focused and attentive reading as the constant spider web of history, the endlessly tangled family connections, and the characters' invariable miscommunications can initially confuse. Krauss also plays games with the page layout - Alma's sections are in numerical point form, and towards the end of the book, Leo and Alma's narratives are just single thoughts, feelings and beliefs on the page.
Astonishingly, Kraus manages to make all the fragile filaments of the circular narrative not only hold together but also support the weight of the extremely ambitious tale. Full of incisive observations on history, life, and the ramifications of unrequited love, this impressive feat of storybook engineering will probably be remembered as one of the years best. But more importantly, The History of Love remains a bittersweet and rather sad ode to the magical influence of literature and writing. Mike Leonard May 05.
Book Review: Very good but not great
Summary: 4 Stars
Both the book's ethereal charm and its weakness spring from rapid shifts of character, continent, and time and the loose braiding of events. We don't stay in one place long. While I did not find the string of coincidences that drive the story believable and in mild confusion often went back to check on relationships and events, the main characters are so strong, "real," and likeable, I found myself holding my breath as I read and willingly suspended my disbelief for the pleasure of the ride. An engaging, fast, and not overly "deep" read about the many facets of love.Book Review: Brilliant but flawed
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is very similar in both content and tone to Jonathan Safran Foer's latest book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It's interesting to note that Foer and Krauss are husband and wife.
Summary, no spoilers:
This novel is told from the point of view of several narrators.
The first, and best narrator, (the parts that feature him are brilliant), is Leo Gursky. Leo lives by himself in New York. He was born in Poland, and fell in love with a girl named Alma. They vowed to spend their lives together.
Due to the war, Leo and Alma were separated, and Leo has spent his life alone, pining for Alma.
The other main narrator is a young girl also named Alma, who has lost her father to pancreatic cancer and lives with her young brother and mother. All have been terribly damaged by his death.
Although we occasionally get other narrators, the story is essentially told by these two wounded individuals. Alma tries to find the woman for whom she was named, and Leo tries to become a part of the living world, and become a part of his son Isaac's life. And all of this centers around a mysterious book entitled The History of Love.
This is a gorgeous book. Like Foer's novel, this book is funny, sad, and quirky. At times a bit too quirky.
I thought the chapters involving Leo were terrific. The book starts out with Leo's narration, and hence the book starts out on a powerful note.
Although I enjoyed the character of young Alma, the chapters involving her were often odd, and sometimes slowed the pace of the story.
Still, this book is worthy of 5 stars, and it would make a wonderful book club choice...there is a lot to discuss.
So who has the better book, Foer or Krauss? My vote goes to Krauss, who wrote a page turner that has a better flow, and is more accessible than the Foer's work.
Recommended.
Book Review: Love "History"
Summary: 5 Stars
"He was a great writer. He fell in love. It was his life." While those are the final words of Nicole Krauss's illuminating second novel, "The History of Love," those three short sentences only highlight what I knew all along. This a unique book, haunting and quietly funny, and which leaves you thinking about memories, about death, and about love.
Leo Gursky has a weak heart, and may die at any moment. Virtually no one knows him, and his own son never even knew of him; he drops his change and buys things, just so someone might remember him when he dies. Sixty years ago, he fled Nazi-occupied Poland to pursue a childhood sweetheart to America, but she thought he had died, and married someone else.
Before that happened, Leo wrote a exquisite ode to her, called the "History of Love," a fictional look at love's origins, its milestones, and at a mysterious girl called Alma. A copy of that book found its way into teenage Alma's household, and she was named after that mysterious woman. Now, as her grief-stricken mother translates one of the few copies into English, Alma sets out on a journey of discovery -- about the mystery author, the person who wants the translation, and the mysterious original Alma.
Nicole Krauss writes much like her husband Jonathan Safran Foer -- she also takes a look at the past and present, at immigrants, and at the journies of our elders. And the insights she shows about the nature of love, and the intersections of life and literature, are startlingly deep. Many longtime authors can only dream of such delicate sensibilities.
The writing itself is surprisingly fluid, considering that Krauss changes narrators and timeframes several times, and sometimes refers to one character by different names. She also changes her style, depending on the narrator -- the old man has a more rambly style, while Alma neatly compiles her thoughts into numbered lists.
All the stories of death, loneliness and memories could be depressing. But Krauss injects them with gentle humor, such as Alma's brother Bird, who thinks he might be the Messiah (yeah, right, kid). There are also surprisingly poignant passages from the "History of Love" itself, which offer tiny insights into Leo's past love. Never sentimental, never maudlin. Just quietly, sadly romantic.
"The History of Love" is a truly exquisite piece of work, an insightful novel that is both heartbreaking and heartwarming. Definitely one of 2005's must-reads, and a beautiful read.