The History of Love: A Novel

published	May 1st 2006 by W. W. Norton
binding	Paperback
isbn	0393328627 (isbn13: 9780393328622)
pages	272
literary awards	2006 Orange Prize Shortlist
description	Nicole Krauss's The History of Love is a hauntingly beautiful novel about two characters whose lives are woven together in such complex ways th...more [close] 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 [close]
date added	12-05-06 edit book

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | Abebooks | more...

discuss this book

topics	replies	last activity
The History of Love: Bruno	9	31 days ago, 10:59AM
review	4	18 days ago, 02:39PM

new topic

groups with this book

view all groups »

friend reviews (0)

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

Best Books of the Decade: 2000's

120 books | 303 voters

NBC's Today Show Book Club

33 books | 8 voters

More...

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 13330)

Susan rated it:

04/16/08

bookshelves: adult-books-that-are-not-romances

Read in April, 2008

A powerful story about the loneliness of an elderly man, a Holocaust survivor, Leopold Gursky. He is a writer who is never heard, at least not in his own voice. Krauss paints the portrait of invisibility with such sorrowful accuracy. Leon is completely alone and "all I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen." Because of this, he purposely draws negative attention to himself, just for the sake of getting noticed. Such as dropping change on the floor in a busy checkout line. ...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

2 comments

Bryn rated it:

12/23/07

bookshelves: contemporary-fiction, multiple-narrators, own-it, prize-winner

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: anyone in love with language

By page 11 I knew I was going to love this book. Krauss' writing style is simply incredible. I will admit I was somehwat confused by the story itself and had to back up several times (and the ending?), but reading this one tasted as good as a box of Godvia chocolates. If I ever catch up with all the books I want to read a first time, I will definitely revisit this one.

P.S. Did a little Google searching to try to figure out what I missed. While I was largely unsuccessful, I did find some...more By page 11 I knew I was going to love this book. Krauss' writing style is simply incredible. I will admit I was somehwat confused by the story itself and had to back up several times (and the ending?), but reading this one tasted as good as a box of Godvia chocolates. If I ever catch up with all the books I want to read a first time, I will definitely revisit this one.

P.S. Did a little Google searching to try to figure out what I missed. While I was largely unsuccessful, I did find some interesting facts. This book is being made into a movie to debut in 2009. Krauss is married to fellow writer Jonathan Safran Foer, whose book "Everything is Illuminted" I found quite comical, but even more confusing than "History of Love" and certainly not as heartfelt. It was the runner up for the Orange Fiction prize in 2005 and was chosen as a Today Show read, and yet I still missed hearing about it until a couple months ago.

BEST REVIEW:

Monday, August 6, 2007
The History of Love: A Review by Julia Henderson

The History of Love was one of those books I avoided at first. Too many people told me how amazing it was, how much I'd love it, how I should run to the nearest independent bookstore and grab a copy.

All of that made me NOT want to read the thing, so I half-heartedly suggested it for my book club and felt not at all crushed when no one picked it. And then I saw it on a buy-one-get-one rack at the bookstore and picked it up. I really didn't know a thing about the book (except that people thought I'd like it), but from the moment I read the first paragraph, I was hooked by author Nicole Krauss's elegant, careful prose.

The author is married to Jonathan Safran Foer of similarly-topiced Everything Is Illuminated. They both live in Brooklyn and write non-traditionally about the Holocaust, and there's no doubt that Foer is the better-known author. But there was something in Krauss's book that tapped into my emotions much more successfully than Foer ever did.

The premise of the story isn't so unique: Teenaged lovers lose touch after the Germans invade Poland and desecrate a Jewish town and the survivors are never the same again; two adults fall in love over a book a generation later, and start a family; the father dies, the children are different because of his death; the young daughter tries to trace her parents' love; the lives of many people intersect in the small world of New York...but Krauss is so clever in the way she weaves these lives together that the reader finds herself completely and utterly immersed in the story, guessing at endings and seduced by the possibility of hope.

I usually speed-read -- afterall, there are too many good books in this world to justify reading slowly -- but The History of Love made me want to read slowly enough to savor every word. And it didn't surprise me that I stopped breathing for a moment when I read the last few sentences, or that instead of immediately moving on to the next book on my list, I waited a few days to give this one time to settle in. I even get that horrible jealous feeling when I see someone reading the novel on the subway...how lucky they are that they're still in the middle of it, how sad I am that I've finished it.

You'd be doing yourself a disservice not to read this book. If you need to borrow a copy, just let me know. I want my own copy to be passed to so many people that I get it back waterlogged by flood, fire-tarnished, tattered and worn.

Julia Henderson is Art Editor and Webmistress of Fringe.
...less

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

1 comments

Teresa rated it:

(review of isbn 0393060349)

08/11/07

bookshelves: readandreviewed

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in June, 2005

I finished reading "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss a few days ago. Here's a synopsis:

"An unlikely and unforgettable hero, Leo Gursky is a survivor -- of war, of love, and of loneliness. A retired locksmith, Leo does his best to get by. He measures the passage of days by the nightly arrival of the delivery boy from the Chinese restaurant and has arranged a code with his upstairs neighbor: Three taps on the radiator means, "ARE YOU ALIVE?, two means YES, one NO."...more I finished reading "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss a few days ago. Here's a synopsis:

"An unlikely and unforgettable hero, Leo Gursky is a survivor -- of war, of love, and of loneliness. A retired locksmith, Leo does his best to get by. He measures the passage of days by the nightly arrival of the delivery boy from the Chinese restaurant and has arranged a code with his upstairs neighbor: Three taps on the radiator means, "ARE YOU ALIVE?, two means YES, one NO." But it wasn't always so. Sixty years earlier, before he fled Poland for New York, Leo met a girl named Alma and fell in love. He wrote a book and named the character in it after his beloved. Years passed, lives changed, and unbeknownst to Leo, the book survived. And it provides Leo -- in the eighth decade of his life -- with a link to the son he's never known. How this long-lost book makes an extraordinary reappearance and connects the lives of disparate characters is only one of the small miracles The History of Love offers its readers." - from bn.com

My thought at the end of the book was - The ending brought the book up from good to very good. Still not great.

I wanted to love this book. I really did. I had loved the excerpt I'd read in the New Yorker, and I was expecting to love the whole thing. I particularly loved the characters she created: Leo Gursky - who was so vivid, and interesting, with such a distinct voice. Alma Singer - a fourteen year old girl in a novel I could actually relate to for once. Smart, but not annoyingly/precociously so. Body issues, but not to the point where she felt sorry for herself as a person. Bird - my only complaintis that I feel like he got short shrift. He's so interesting, I think he deserved a novel of his own. He was reduced to a plot device, and that really irritated me, because I liked him so much. To have his interest in his faith exist only to serve Alma's search was downright criminal.(and why is his religious fervence treated like an illness instad of as something that can actually help him through his father's death? Just curious...)

What bothered me was that Krauss seemed to be trying too hard to be "experiemental." (whatever that means anymore...) What I loved about Man Walks Into a Room, her first novel, was its language and its directness. How it told a story. But for everything I enjoyed about this book, there were two that either annoyed me or confused me.

There are some beautiful poignant passages in this book - about lost/new love, about identity, about growing older...but then there's a page of charts for no real reason. Alma tells her story in list form. There are pages with only one or two sentences on them (some successful, some not). I dont' feel like any of these "tricks" suited the story she was trying to tell. It didn't feel like that's the way the story needed to be told - also, this didn't feel like Krauss' voice to me. It felt as if she were doing an impression...or at the very least, she was a ventriloquist speaking through a dummy. I missed her voice.

I wanted to hear Nicole Krauss speak...I ended up hearing who she thought we wanted to hear. It's not the same thing.
...less

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

add a comment

Matthew rated it:

07/26/07

Nicole Krauss is married to Jonathan Safran Foer. They both live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and they both write clever, critically acclaimed novels featuring preciously innocent narrators, magical realism, and some safe postmodern "experiments" (blank pages, pictures, excessive repetition, etc.) that you'd notice just by flipping through. I loved Foer's Everything is Illuminated, liked his Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close okay, and liked Krauss's History of Love a...more

Like this review? yes (12 people liked it)

1 comments

Briana rated it:

03/20/08

Read in March, 2008

I came to this book expecting to be unimpressed, and I am not normally that type of reader. But I had read articles about Kraus and her husband (Jonathan Safran Foer) and how their latest novels were eerily similar. Having loved her husband’s book, I figured The History of Love would be a let down. I was wrong.

While I loved the precociousness of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close's Oskar, despite many criticizing Foer for it, after reading THOL Oskar just isn’t as...more I came to this book expecting to be unimpressed, and I am not normally that type of reader. But I had read articles about Kraus and her husband (Jonathan Safran Foer) and how their latest novels were eerily similar. Having loved her husband’s book, I figured The History of Love would be a let down. I was wrong.

While I loved the precociousness of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close's Oskar, despite many criticizing Foer for it, after reading THOL Oskar just isn’t as appealing. Sure, his search is poignant and there are moments of pure brilliance in Oskar’s constant inventing and surviving. But, Kraus’ characters are richer and more human; fantastical in their own right (Leo’s desperate attempts to not die on a day that no one has seen him, Alma’s naïve effort to construct happiness for her mother, Bird’s fantasies of being a lamed vovnik), yet believable and real.

At first glance, old man Leo Gursky is depressed and depressing. After responding to an ad in the newspaper, Gursky is hired for $10 as a model for a nude drawing class. The reader is left to feel sorry for Gursky and speculate about why he would go (he craves human interaction, he doesn’t want to die on a day no one saw him, he’s bored). His apartment is covered in stuff---cluttered like that of a collecting recluse. He has a deal with his best friend Bruno to periodically check on each other to make sure one of them hasn’t died without anyone noticing. It’s a heavy dose of depression at the beginning. Yet, once he begins to tell his story, he is not just depressed and depressing. He is sympathetic and delusional, smart yet hopeless. He ends up somehow strangely warm. And funny—really funny!

Alma Singer is equally complex and textured. She’s 15 and awkward, obsessed with books of her dead father’s about surviving in the wild. She sleeps in a sleeping bag on the floor of her NYC apartment and is constantly worried about her little brother Bird and his growing strangeness and religiousness. She has a huge crush on her Russian friend Mischa, yet when he kisses her she pulls back and tells him she likes another boy. He responds to the rejection the only way a 15 year old boy can, by moving on and not calling her. She mopes and secretly hopes for him to call everyday, meanwhile she searches every human record in NYC trying to uncover the secret behind Alma Mereminski, a character from a book and the woman she was named after. When Bird asks her questions about their Dad, she makes up things because she can’t remember and she wants to be able to give Bird something of their late father.

Other characters are equally captivating. Kraus manages to tell a most imaginative story full of countless coincidences, esoteric passages (it’s a book about books, writers and readers), and Holocaust survivors in a very heart-warming and accessible way. This book was both profound and charming—which was really nice to find in one place.
...less

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

2 comments

Lucy rated it:

10/07/07

Read in October, 2007

I've seen The History of Love on several other blogger's reading lists and after being made aware of the fact that the author, Nicole Krauss, is married to the author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a book I enjoyed only a couple of months ago, I made a reservation at the library.

In the mood for a romance, when it arrived, I bumped this book past others that have been sitting on my nightstand longer. At first, I was completely absorbed in the writing and Leo Gursky. I even told Emily...more I've seen The History of Love on several other blogger's reading lists and after being made aware of the fact that the author, Nicole Krauss, is married to the author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a book I enjoyed only a couple of months ago, I made a reservation at the library.

In the mood for a romance, when it arrived, I bumped this book past others that have been sitting on my nightstand longer. At first, I was completely absorbed in the writing and Leo Gursky. I even told Emily this book might go on my list of Top Ten favorites. Oh, how I loved Leo's thoughts and his "But." and "And yet." sentences. So stretchy. Those frequently used simple sentences created a narrative of yearning and unfufillment that perfectly expressed Leo's character's disappointment in life.

When it was Alma's turn to speak and disclose, I wasn't nearly so infatuated. Her thoughts and questions lacked the honesty and pain that the much older Leo was able to possess, which makes sense as Alma was only fourteen. Still, I persevered and even enjoyed the minute and slow discoveries she was making.

This book is almost a mystery. The hows and the whys are confusing and it isn't until the end that the missing key is given which opens up the full heartache and confusion of all the characters. Unfortunately, by this time, I was much less enchanted with the entire story as I found way too many parallels with her husband's book that I had already read. They are both about Jewish people divided by a generation who come together through letters. They are both set in New York City with flashbacks to Germany during World War II. They both involve extremely precocious and unnaturally odd children who lose a parent and deal with their grief by setting out on an expedition of discovery. And they both end abysmally disappointing with dysfunction winning over true love. Sigh.

I think I would have loved this book had I read it first or only. Sadly, both books feel tainted to me now. Like, maybe....in a perfect world, I could have enjoyed Singing Bee on NBC. But then Fox came out with Don't Forget the Lyrics. Same idea, different show...I enjoy neither because I don't like copying.

These books don't plagiarize each other or anything, but there are too many similarities for either to be the original and the great books that they are supposed to me. Maybe they need to set their typewriters up in different...less

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

add a comment

Christy rated it:

05/13/08

bookshelves: books-for-teaching, miscellaneous-fiction

Read in May, 2008

1. What I like about Krauss's novel.

Leo Gursky's melancholy, lonely presence. The sections of the novel told from his perspective are hauntingly beautiful.

Alma's precocious teenager voice. Her voice is less compelling for me than that of Leo Gursky, but still good.

The slow development of the connections between Leo, Alma, Zvi Litvinoff, Isaac, and the book The History of Love, in terms not only of plot but of theme.

2. What is mildly irritating about the book. ...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

Chak rated it:

03/31/08

bookshelves: literary-snackers

Read in March, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

The characters were the best part of this book for me, though there was a lot to like. There are many characters in the book, though only three really narrate (Leo - an elderly yet scrappy complainer who narrowly escaped the Nazis when they occupied Poland; Alma - a tween survival enthusiast pulled too tightly by the needs of her strange and possibly mentally challenged younger brother and her depressed, widowed mother, as well as her own developing needs to clarify her identity; and "Bird...more The characters were the best part of this book for me, though there was a lot to like. There are many characters in the book, though only three really narrate (Leo - an elderly yet scrappy complainer who narrowly escaped the Nazis when they occupied Poland; Alma - a tween survival enthusiast pulled too tightly by the needs of her strange and possibly mentally challenged younger brother and her depressed, widowed mother, as well as her own developing needs to clarify her identity; and "Bird," the aforementioned younger brother of Alma who sells lemonade to finance his presumed destiny of saving mankind). The author (Nicole Krauss) gave them fascinating attributes and interests and writes them with clarity, tenderness (even when they are unlikeable) and such a strong voice that the reader would know who was narrating even if there was only a sentence or two.

Much of the dramatic tension in the book is due to the way Ms. Krauss reveals the story in a non-linear fashion so that much of it is obscured until the last pages, in which she takes (what I consider to be) a literary cop-out by making an important part of the story be a figment of someone's imagination. The reader was unecessarily tricked from the get-go (pages 5 and 6 to be exact) into a highly detailed and realistic vision of an imaginary friend. Why? I felt the story would have been a lot better and the writer would have showed more storytelling skill if she resolved that issue in a more creative way (or even kept the friend real), and that is why this book got four stars from me instead of five. Aside from that, though, I loved everything else.

A recurring theme in the book was that nearly every character wrongly kept information from a loved one in order to protect them. Only the eventually-omniscient reader was able to see the heartbreaking truth that these omissions only hurt the loved ones even more. That particular theme was expertly and consistently well-written and helped the reader identify with every character and understand his or her intentions.

In spite of the sorrowful and bittersweet tone of the novel, there were humorous parts that were highly entertaining, but never distracted from the larger story.

I would highly recommend this book. After 252+1 pages that I feverishly read, I still wished for more. ...less

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Ami rated it:

05/13/08

Read in May, 2008

I picked up this book thinking, "eh, this sounds interesting," not usually the type of book I normally read. And then I wound up falling in love with it. It not necessarily a love story, like the cheesy/trashy romance novels you see lined up on the check out counter, but a story about love itself. Love, loneliness, relationships (not only between lovers, but families and friends), invisibility. One of the most powerful lines in the books is said by the elderly Leo Gursky, "All ...more I picked up this book thinking, "eh, this sounds interesting," not usually the type of book I normally read. And then I wound up falling in love with it. It not necessarily a love story, like the cheesy/trashy romance novels you see lined up on the check out counter, but a story about love itself. Love, loneliness, relationships (not only between lovers, but families and friends), invisibility. One of the most powerful lines in the books is said by the elderly Leo Gursky, "All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen."

I was extremely moved by the relationship between Alma and her brother Bird, especially towards the end of the book when she discovers his diary. And, to be honest, my favorite passage in the book:

"So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon'tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglass-
I'veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme...
There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bundle of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string.
The practice of attaching cups to the ends of the string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world's first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America.
When the world grew bigger, and there wasn't enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented.
Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person's silence."...less

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Sansanee rated it:

03/01/07

bookshelves: book-group, fiction

Read in October, 2005

Have you ever felt so moved that it's as if you're possessed? Reading The History of Love was like having my chest cracked open, the words flooding into me.

Some passages I loved:

The floorboards creaked under my weight. There were books everywhere. There were pens, and a blue glass vase, an ashtray from the Dolder Grand in Zurich, the rusted arrow of a weather vane, a little brass hourglass, sand dollars on the windowsill, a pair of binoculars, an empty wine bottle that served as a candle holder, wax melted down the neck. I touched this thing and that. At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived. ...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

1 comments

Brynn rated it:

08/20/07

bookshelves: summer2007

Read in May, 2007

"To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky." (45)

"He ran his fingers down the spine over her thin blouse, and for a moment he forgot the danger he was in, grateful for the world which purposefully puts divisi...more "To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky." (45)

"He ran his fingers down the spine over her thin blouse, and for a moment he forgot the danger he was in, grateful for the world which purposefully puts divisions in place so that we can overcome them, feeling the joy of getting closer, even if deep down we can never forget the sadness of our insurmountable differences." (63)

"Sometimes you need a stroke of genius and, lo and behold, genius comes and strokes you." (87)

"The fact that you got a little happier today doesn't change the fact that you also became a little adder. Everyday you come a little more of both, which means that right now, at this exact moment, you're the happiest and saddest you've ever been in your whole life." (91)

"Contrary to logic, the feeling of surprise wasn't born immediately. It came only after people had enough time to get used to things as they were. And when enough time had passed, and someone felt the first feeling of surprise, someone, somewhere else, felt the first pang of nostalgia." (107)

"At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anyways away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the top that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived." (165)

"Now that mine is almost over, I can say that the thing that struck me most about life is the capacity for change. One day you're a person and the next day they tell you you're a dog. At first it's hard to bear, but after a while you learn not to look at it as a loss. There's even a moment when it becomes exhilarating to realize just how little needs to stay the same for you to continue the effort they call, for lack of a better word, being human." (236)...less

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

add a comment

allison rated it:

06/10/07

bookshelves: 2007

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in May, 2007

SUCH A POWERFUL ENDING. This would make an amazing movie, if done right. This book was mildly confusing for the first 200 pages (or maybe just for me -- I was confused by all the old foreign guys doing different things), but things get cleared up really quickly toward the later part of the book, and- just- how things all came together, making the conclusion succinct and bittersweet, and, like I said, just really powerful.

And the POEM AT THE END. I always admire a good ending, and Nicole...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

Tung rated it:

07/16/08

Read in July, 2008

Two of my favorite books of the last decade are Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – both written by Jonathan Safran Foer. Both books had well-developed characters and engaging plots, and both books were told in dazzlingly creative styles that perfectly meshed written letters with straightforward prose with excerpts from books within the book with personal diary entries etc. The mark of a great writer is being able to balance the story with the creative prose, wi...more Two of my favorite books of the last decade are Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – both written by Jonathan Safran Foer. Both books had well-developed characters and engaging plots, and both books were told in dazzlingly creative styles that perfectly meshed written letters with straightforward prose with excerpts from books within the book with personal diary entries etc. The mark of a great writer is being able to balance the story with the creative prose, without one interfering with the other. Krauss’s The History of Love is one of the first non-Safran Foer books I’ve read that has been able to pull this off, and pull it off marvelously well; this is a breathtaking book. The story revolves around two main characters: one is Leo Gursky, a man in his eighties dealing with the death of a son who didn’t know he was the father; the second is a fifteen-year-old girl named Alma Singer who is searching for a special someone for her mother who still grieves for her husband who died almost a decade earlier. Both Leo and Alma seek cures for loneliness; and both Leo and Alma desperately search for lost love – Leo for a childhood sweetheart who fled WWII Poland for America, and Alma for her dead father. What ties these two lives together is a mysterious book called The History of Love. Krauss unravels these intertwined searches for love by switching from narrative to narrative – from Leo’s first-person recounting of his life to Alma’s personal diary entries to excerpts from this mysterious book. And the last threads that unravel in the last thirty pages make for as good an ending as I’ve read in a while. Leo and Alma are wonderfully deep characters, and their struggles with love in all of its varied aspects (unrequited love, adolescent love, lost love, parental love, et al) is well-told throughout. Great story, great characters, and perfectly creative prose. Highly recommended, and one of the best books of the year for me....less

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Lauren rated it:

06/10/08

bookshelves: historical-fiction

Read in June, 2008

recommended to Lauren by: Colleen

I may have been reading it too fast because it jumps around between characters and now I"m a little confused. However, the book is fabulous and I find myself laughing aloud while reading. I can't wait to find out what happens next (I forgot it on my desk at work... :(

I love this book, it is nothing like what you expect it to be about after hearing the title. I was a little befuddled in parts because there are so many characters switching to the first person I wasn't always sure w...more

Like this review? yes

1 comments

Kristina rated it:

08/08/07

Read in July, 2007

Even though we're all a bit alone in the world, there are certain things that bind us together as human beings. What really made me stop and think about this, actually, was the bridge collapse last Wednesday. No matter where you were, you knew it was on everybody's mind, and somehow knowing, even when I was just sitting in Starbucks, that everyone around me was thinking about the same thing made me think about how we're all in this together. The woman who sold me my morning bagel at Brueggers...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Kevin rated it:

04/04/08

Read in April, 2008

"The History of Love" is a good read, with a sweet and sad story at its heart--though at points, it feels a little forced. The stories of three characters are wound together, developed to different degrees, each written in a distinctive style (one of numerous stylistic choices that unavoidably call to mind Krauss's husband,