false 54621639 1181904 3867 0393328627 9780393328622 3157 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165367089m/3867.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165367089s/3867.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3867.The_History_of_Love 3.87 18615 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. .]]> 2633 3.83 20468 3490 2006 5 0 false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri May 01 14:03:09 -0700 2009 Fri May 01 14:11:35 -0700 2009
And yet. I loved it.

From the first few pages, I was completely hooked. This novel is an extraordinary work of fiction. It’s heart breaking, beautiful, frust...more...]]>