“For my Charlotte, my Alma. This is the book I would have written for you if I could write.” (108)

I thank Nicole Krauss for writing this book for me because I could not write it for myself. This is the book I would have written if I could write. I would have written this book for myself; for all that I have lost; and for all that I hope to yet find. Nicole gives my loss words on wing. Nicole writes with the wisdom and skill of the aged.

I can’t reveal much about the plot. This is a review where More...

I need to cut the crap with my preconceptions. Although I almost unfailingly launch into a new novel with great enthusiasm like a kid on Christmas morning, anxious to discover what hidden treasure awaits, for some reason I held out little hope for Mrs. Foer’s book about a book about love. Maybe it’s because books about books about love aren’t usually my thing? Maybe it’s because I read her husband’s bestseller last year and was less than impressed? Maybe it’s because I had heard somewhere that t More...

Original Comments (Pre-Review):

I would like to review this novel more formally in the near future, but to do so I'll have to flick through it and refresh my memory.

My reaction at the time was that it was one of the best novels I had ever read.

Nicole Krauss understands people and love and feelings and she writes about them in a word perfect way.

As a reader, I am prepared to go wherever she wants to take me. I will trust her judgement.

I have recently watched a few of her videos and interviews on Y More...

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 little less. I'm wondering now More...

It is not hard to like this book. The writing is stylish. Four POVs with two different settings and starts way back from the Second World War to the present. This is basically a love story between two young lovers in Poland. They get separated because the father of the girl sends her to America not knowing that she is pregnant with a child. The young boy follows the girl to America only to find out that she is already married and the child does not know that he is the father. So, the poor man, L More...

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, 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. Si 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 thi More...

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.

Leo's habit of saying "And yet."

Alma More...

If the opportunity to read this book in one sitting would have been available to me, I probably would have taken it. Unfortunately my job tends to cramp my reading style more often than not (admittedly not the worst problem in the world to have), but sometimes I can’t help but think about how much reading I could get done if I didn’t have to spend the best hours of my day doing work. Oh well. I suppose that is what retirement will be for.

I really loved this book. The characters spoke to me and 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 More...

Disappointing ending & trite, too.
I think the plotting is pretty piss-poor. A very convoluted bifurcated structure of telling a story that hinges on a poor coincidental set of facts, and when you really stop to think about it -- you wonder if you've just spent 200 pages reading and trying to guess at two or three patched up facts that hardly amount to a mystery. Krauss has an engaging storytelling style, even stunning prose at times, punctured with welcome humor, but the strands do not come More...

Thank you to the lovely, anonymous man in the Port Credit Starbucks who handed me the napkins, without a word, as I finished this up not an hour ago with tears filling my eyes.

It was a perfect moment perfectly matched to this pretty much perfect book.
______________________

Read this book if:
1) you liked Incredibly Loud Extremely Close, Everything is Illuminated and/or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
2) you like fictional, character-driven stories of Holocaust survivors e.g., The 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 interest More...

I recommend The History of Love.

Because, what was I supposed to say? I've waited my whole life for her? She was the opposite of death? And now I am still here, waiting?

Break my heart, why don't you, Nicole Krauss.*sniffs*

When I started reading The History of Love, I was laughing. I was humored by Leo's eccentricities. A few minutes later, I was quiet. I was gently wishing for the tears to go away. I must me mad, I thought. And it happened many times as my reading progressed. Smiling here, being More...

This beautiful story is about an eighty year old Jewish-Polish immigrant and retired locksmith, Leo Gursky; a fourteen year old girl, Alma Singer, who is trying to find a way to make her mother not sad anymore; and Zvi Litvinoff, the author of an obscure book called The History of Love. What they each have to do with one another isn't at first apparent, but becomes all too clear and inseparable as you read on.

It is a love story, a story of survival and ageing, of memory and imagination, of sadne More...

This book was promising at the beginning, but proceeded to get sloppy and puzzling, and then ended in an unsatisfying and unclear way. It's a convoluted plot involving a Polish Jew who falls completely for a childhood girlfriend, writes a book about her, and then is separated from both by the Holocaust. Not knowing the book was eventually published by the friend to whom he gave it for safekeeping, he now lives his old age in New York, lonely and waiting to die. His story is interwoven with that More...

I know everyone talks about how Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safron Foer are married and perfect and live in Park Slope and blah blah blah. I can see the connections between their work, for sure, but I really liked this book a lot more than the Foer I have read. For instance, Krauss' non-traditional use of the page, the parts in the beginning and the end, don't bug me like they did in Foer's recent book.

I like how Krauss connected the lives of so many people in a way that seemed confusing and com 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 More...

This is the sort of book that I didn't expect to like, given that the title seems ridiculously ambitious. But in a moment of optimism I bought it anyway, and boy did it pay off. Nicole Krauss skirts the intimidating topic of romantic love by sneaking up behind other kinds of love and encouraging them to stop leaning against the wall at the dance and get out there and share their groove thang. She weaves together disparate threads of lives until, by the end, you see the vast, beautiful, silken as More...

This book made me smile from beginning to end. Especially the character of Leo Gursky. For him, alone, I would give this book 5 stars. And yet, there was so much more.

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. The most painf More...

I just finished The History of Love by Nicole Krauss on my way to the office this morning. I started reading History after I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. The two authors are married. The two authors write incredibly similarly so just about every book selling website suggests that you read both if any at all. Like a lamb, I followed the advice of one Amazon.com blindly without realizing I may have needed a break between the two.

Anyway, the History is all about More...

How about the history of me bawling my face off.

Nicole Krauss writes beautifully.

She has a gift with painting pictures with words, feelings and people leaping of the pages, so raw and real you can almost touch them, and if you are not careful, they will cut you. Deeply.
Really, with this book, “I don’t know what to say about it, except that it moved me in a way one hopes to be moved each time he begins a book.”
And yet…. (view spoiler)[ if/when you’ve read the book, you’ll get what I did there. He. He….he. (hide spoiler)] I will try to say a few things more, with the he More...

Post-modern trickery, deceased fathers and their precocious offspring, WWII/Holocaust-era backstories, interweaving narratives tied together by endearingly convenient coincidences and gradually unveiled personal histories. No, I’m not speaking of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which, admittedly, I adore), I’m referring to his other half’s novel.

The novel that introduced me to one of my favorite voices in contemporary fiction: Leo Gursky.

I’m fairly certain that many More...

Meh. There's a lot to think about here, and a warmth and generosity that's very appealing. but I was not entirely satisfied with the way the book handled itself--either style-wise or theme-wise. Which I will attempt to explain:

Themes That Seemed Interesting and Really Worth Thinking About, But Which Seem Inadequately Explored:
* The conflation of Holocaust survivors' guilt (and second-generation survivors' guilt) with the familiar, authorly notion of "anxiety of influence." Which I thought was pr More...

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 st More...

A well-crafted, suspense-inducing plotline, along with some moving characters make for a totally engrossing reading experience.

The book begins with the very credible voice of Leo Gursky who ruminates on the state of being old. I have never read such a true, honest, and hillarious testimony of the fears that come with aging. Running parellel to Gursky's story is the voice of Alma, a curious young teenager with a name full of history and meaning. Throughout the book we wait to see if and how thes More...