Krauss' "History of Love" is One Worth Repeating

Categories: Staff Picks , Fiction

The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss, was one of those rare novels that captured me on page one then held me hostage from other activities—namely eating and sleeping—until I reached the final page.  And once I was released, all I wanted to do was find someone else who'd read it and shared my experience.

History is about many things—aging and loss, love and friendship, memories—but it is also a book about a book with the same title.  The mystery of this book within a book propels the action towards a breathless conclusion.  I often found myself flipping through pages I'd already read in order to confirm my suspicions.  And I restrained myself from flipping ahead in the book or even reading the summary on the back of the book to avoid becoming spoiled.

For me, though, the true joy in this novel was its main characters, Leo Gursky and Alma Singer.  Leo, an old man living alone in New York City, is so afraid of dying on a day he isn't seen by anyone else that he goes out of his way to be noticed: he knocks over the sugar at Starbucks, he goes to shoe stores and makes the clerk bring him all variety of shoes, and he even responds to an ad in the paper to pose for a life drawing class!  (You'll have to read it yourself to find out if he goes through with it).

Alma, on the other hand, is fourteen years old and dealing with the death of her father seven years earlier.  She tries to help her mom move on and her brother—who's convinced he's a lamed vovnik—be more normal.  Mostly, she's trying to solve the mystery of who inspired the character after whom she was named.  Leo's and Alma's stories are told separately, as each chapter shifts focus and voices. 

I don't want to give too much of the story away.  The History of Love is Nicole Krauss' second book.  If her first novel, A Man Walks into a Room, is as humorous and heartbreaking as History, I'm sure to be captured again.