The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

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.

I didn't love this book. I didn't hate it either.

The History of Love is about 2 people. A man, Leo Gursky, who fell in love with a girl at age 10, wrote a book about her, then lost her. And a girl, Alma Singer, whose father gave her mother Gursky's book and who is named after the girl in that book.

I really liked this book in the beginning. Leo's part of the story is well written and pretty funny at times. You really get the cranky old man part of him from it. Alma's parts were scattered and choppy which was annoying at times but I think it worked well given she is a 14 year old girl, and sometimes, that is how their brains work. The further you get into the book, though, the more puzzling it gets. It seems Krauss wanted to make such a mystery with the story that she put so many twist and turns and she got lost. Toward the last third of the book she starts to insert diary entries from Alma's little brother, too, which just made it that much more confusing.

There were so many characters meaninglessly inserted into the plot, also. I don't get why half of them were there, they had no story to tell and no real point of being there.

I did love a few of the chapters that were shared from Gursky's book, The History of Love. Quite a few of them were so compelling and beautifully written, that I wished the rest of the book was just a retelling of it's namesake. I especially loved the chapter called, "Die Laughing".

There were some really good parts, where I laughed or smiled. But most of the time, I was just confused and wanted it to come to an end. After 240 pages, it did finally start coming to an end, but it was completely disappointing. Krauss wrapped up her confusing little novel into a pretty little bow and called it good. Why would you write such a complex story line just to quickly end it in such a trite way?

What dissapointed me more was that Krauss is married to Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close", which I read, reviewed and loved. Their writing styles are very similar but she just can't compare to him, in my opinion.

I am not sure if the good of the book outweighs the bad. I thought the book was just ok.

2 out of 5 stars

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