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The History of Love: A Novel By Nicole Krauss ( W. W. Norton )
Release Date: 2006-05-01
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $13.95
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Product Description
The illuminating national bestseller: "Vertiginously exciting…vibrantly imagined….[Krauss is] a prodigious talent."—Janet Maslin, New York Times
A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.
Leo Gursky is just about surviving, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. And though Leo doesn't know it, that book survived, inspiring fabulous circumstances, even love. Fourteen-year-old Alma was named after a character in that very book. And although she has her hands full—keeping track of her brother, Bird (who thinks he might be the Messiah), and taking copious notes on How to Survive in the Wild—she undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With consummate, spellbinding skill, Nicole Krauss gradually draws together their stories.
This extraordinary book was inspired by the author's four grandparents and by a pantheon of authors whose work is haunted by loss—Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, and more. It is truly a history of love: a tale brimming with laughter, irony, passion, and soaring imaginative power.
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Amazon.com Review
Nicole Krauss's The History of Love is a hauntingly beautiful novel about two characters whose lives are woven together in such complex ways that even after the last page is turned, the reader is left to wonder what really happened. In the hands of a less gifted writer, unraveling this tangled web could easily give way to complete chaos. However, under Krauss's watchful eye, these twists and turns only strengthen the impact of this enchanting book. The History of Love spans of period of over 60 years and takes readers from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe to present day Brighton Beach. At the center of each main character's psyche is the issue of loneliness, and the need to fill a void left empty by lost love. Leo Gursky is a retired locksmith who immigrates to New York after escaping SS officers in his native Poland, only to spend the last stage of his life terrified that no one will notice when he dies. ("I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even though I'm not thirsty.") Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer vacillates between wanting to memorialize her dead father and finding a way to lift her mother's veil of depression. At the same time, she's trying to save her brother Bird, who is convinced he may be the Messiah, from becoming a 10-year-old social pariah. As the connection between Leo and Alma is slowly unmasked, the desperation, along with the potential for salvation, of this unique pair is also revealed. The poetry of her prose, along with an uncanny ability to embody two completely original characters, is what makes Krauss an expert at her craft. But in the end, it's the absolute belief in the uninteruption of love that makes this novel a pleasure, and a wonder to behold. --Gisele Toueg
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 I might have been there... ( timcole )
Five Stars!
It was as though I was there: in the little, cluttered, chokingly dusty single room that Leo Gursky slept in; in the heart of a man's interrupted childhood love affair; in the letters and frantic searching of a young girl newly arrived in New York from Poland, alone, frightened, happy to escape the atocities of the Holocaust but with her future rushing in on her and her firm grasp on young love slipping from her control, her grasp, and finally her memory. A relatively new writer, Nicole was recognized almost immediately by critics and publishers as a burgeoning Great American Writer -- a new Hemmingway, an uncomplicated Updike, a committed Roth, a subtle humorist like Mark Twain whose finger touched indescribable sadness and humor simultaneously. If you've not picked up Ms. Krauss's book, do so now and lightly fondle it like a precious baby, hold it to your cheek and feel its warmth, feel its weight in your hands from the human emotions it packs so eloquently inside.
Nicole is a writer! She's on my shelf, forever.
Five Stars!
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 Just a confusing mess
I agree completely. I bought this book because I was in one of those book excerpt communities and saw a snippet from this novel here posted in an entry about two years ago. It was the one where they met at the age of eleven and the boy bought the girl a dictionary, they lost their virginities to each other in a barn, and then at the end of it all she writes him a letter, "Don't you know there isn't a word for everything?"
Holy cow, the second I picked up this book... well, I could tell just by thumbing through it, this does not seem like the same book. At all.
I do believe that's the only redeeming moment, but I couldn't even find it in the book...
Donated it to my cousin and niece earlier this year. Hope they had better luck with it.
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Artfully constructed and full of suspense ( lveatch )
The History of Love was a deliciously tricky and beautiful novel. I loved the ingenuity of the concept and the story (stories) its/themselves. Two girls named Alma. Two novels known as the History of Love. One lost son, one lost brother. Three tales that intertwined yet came together completely in the end. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good fiction and an artfully told tale.
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Magnificent and Beautiful ( glittergurl276 )
This book as absolutly great. Its a novel that can appeal to many different people, not only women who enjoy a good romance on a rainy day. This book incorporates a number of different characters who all are all weaved together to show the beauty of love, lost and new, and the interconnectedness of the human race. I sincerely recommend this to those who would like a to read a fantastic book about love and family and hard times that try the soul.
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Once upon a time, there was a book, about a book, about a girl. And yet.
Once upon a time, there was a book, about a book, about a girl. And yet.
What a book! I tried to write about it, but found myslef in a poor echo of the B&N review, which I shall place below. The writing in this book is fabulous. Smidgeons and phrases resonate with a fullness that is astonishing. Several tales wrapped up in one, interweaving and yet independent. The depth and glory of first love, the rememberances of an old man, who has survived things that never should have been, the struggles of being a child...
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Addiction
