I compare literature to literature: reading classics and new ones, stuff from different countries, from diverse artists. Genres? Who cares. I can compare apples to oranges because pineapple. And so, I will admit The History of Love is not entirely original. But it works! In that magical way that "Elegence of the Hedgehog" works. (Yup, see? A French novel versus an American one. 2 contrasting views come together with so much complexity that seeing that fated jolt is actually the stuff literature brags being about.)

What lesser writers do in their entire body of work--Paul Auster--this young writer does balletically. A book about a book and who wrote & who DID NOT write this book. The fictional book seems like a lost object we shall never possess--the sense of loss being a part of love after all.

$1.99 Kindle sale, August 5, 2017. Recommended for those who like literary fiction that features lonely souls and troubled characters and tackles deep themes.

I read this with my book club a couple of years ago and I think I was in too much of a hurry to finish it up before the day our club met. Adding it to the "need-to-reread" shelf.

Another book about everlasting love?
How many times has the issue been discussed to death?
Thousands. And yet.
This book is about a rare kind of love; a unique one that is fathomless and can only be expressed by the delicate hands of a virtuoso that reveals in the silences between words left unsaid, between the commas and the semicolons. Because an emotion as deep as the love depicted in The History of Love cannot be pinned down by conventional language. Gestures, the aid of several senses working together and intuition intervening at once are required.
Tap Tap.

Nicole Krauss mingles unpretentious intellect with fresh humor and tenderness to present sobering themes such as the permanent damage the Holocaust left on survivors or the clashing of the rigid layers, individual and collective, that compose identity; and uses them as backdrop to solve the puzzle of the four non-chronological narrative voices that fly off the pages to disclose their seemingly unconnected stories. Appearances tend to be deceitful and the key to solve this tragicomic mystery lies within the written pages of a lost –or maybe usurped?- manuscript, exhibiting a tasteful exercise of metaliterature.

Leo Gursky wants to be noticed, to be made tangible through interaction with strangers, for he has led a phantasmagorical existence that is only real in his memories of life before the war. Now an elderly man in New York, he is trapped in a deadlock between his traumatic past in occupied Poland and his insipient present. Also an aspiring writer with a vast imagination, which he misspent writing obituaries, he dreams of angels that Resemble his first and only love, Alma M-E-R-E-M-I-N-S-K-Y… or was it Alma Moritz?
Alma Singer is only fourteen-years old but very mature for her age. She has set her mind on tracking down the woman she was named after following the thread of a special book that her mother is translating into English, which was a cherished present given to her by her deceased husband, whom she still mourns seven years after his death.
Zivi Litvinoff shared his youth and his desire to become a writer with Gursky and published his only literary work, once stablished in Chile, because his devoted wife Rosa insisted on its precious and rare value.
The Bird is the nickname of Alma’s younger brother, who believes himself to be one of the 36 holy righteous, or lamed-Vovnik, who is sent by the Messiah to help lost souls and he picks his sister as the beneficiary of his mystical powers.
The pieces are set. Do you want to play?
Tap Tap.

The result of this game is what first-rate, inventive storytelling should be. Light and weighty. Witty and heartbreaking. Tragic and serene.
The result is also a cinematic alternation of overlapping story lines, which in spite of its fragmentary layout, achieves a common, poetic atmosphere capable of prevailing over the dissimilar menagerie of narrators and the atemporal maps from where they leap off the page and become real to the baffled reader.
Ultimately, the result is a profuse contemplation on the consequences of forced Exile, loneliness, chance and of course, the restorative, uplifting power of _ _ _ _ love, words and literature that won’t leave any lover of good literature indifferent.

“Really, there isn’t much to say.
He was a great writer.
He fell in love.
It was his life.”

Can you think of anything grander than that?
Neither can I.
Tap Tap.

Catching Up…

This was another Library Book Discussion selection.

There is more to this book, than my words can share. Be patient with me.

This is...

A book within a book.

There will be...

Hearts broken. Loves lost. Feeling invisible.

The story is a beautiful mystery about love and loss.

We have two significant narrators. Leo, an elderly Holocaust survivor, who lost the love of his life and his son, and his manuscript, “The History of Love.”

And…

The second narrator is Alma, a 14-year-old girl, who was named after a character in the book, “The History of Love.”

Alma is determined to find the book’s author.

The book is emotional, heart-wrenching, showcasing feelings of loneliness and desperation.

It is also emotionally rich, showing how fragile life can be.

The beauty of this story lies in the characters – quirky, rich in feelings and expression, and their history. It provides many opportunities to explore the strength and weakness of the human spirit.

Which works well for group discussions.

Bring…

Kleenex please.

I know there is more to share.

So please go here...

For more on this book see this gorgeous review from GR friend s. penkevich here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

“He was a great writer. He fell in love. It was his life.”

The Simplest Questions Are the Hardest to Answer

1. What is love?
2. Who am I?
3. Is there a word for everything?
4. What sort of book is this?
5. What is a palaeontologist?



5. What is a Palaeontologist?

“If he took a complete, illustrated guide to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, shred it into a hundred pieces, cast them into the wind from the museum’s steps, let a few weeks pass, went back and scoured Fifth Avenue and Central Park for as many surviving scraps as he could find, then tried to reconstruct the history of painting, including schools, styles, genres, and names of painters from his scraps, that would be like being a palaeontologist.”

This beautiful book is a similar cornucopia of fragments. The narratives have different textures, colours, size, shape, weight, mood, and style. They connect in often unexpected ways: pieces may split, run parallel, then diverge, or be reunited. And yet. The result is wondrous, strange, and deceptively simple.

4. What Sort of Book is This?

“A kind of half-light in which the reader can project his or her own imagination.”

It is ostensibly about love, but is at least as much about surviving loss and postponing death. It’s also about identity. And yet. The book itself has no single identity: love stories, investigative journal, self-help book, memoir, philosophical musings, historical fiction, bildungsroman, quest, survival manual, teenage diary, spiritual metaphor...

It is like Newton's Third Law interpreted as poetic allegory. Every force is counterbalanced by an equal and opposite force: writing and reading, truth and lies, taking and giving, youth and age, future and past, hope and despair, hiding and being seen, and ultimately, life and death.

3. Is There a Word for Everything?

“When will you learn that there isn’t a word for everything?” a reader says to a writer. Long ago, “sometimes people felt things and, because there was no word for them, they went unmentioned.” Trying to describe the emotion of being moved “must have been like trying to catch something invisible”. Years later, the writer calls a book “Words for Everything”.

Many characters read, and all the main characters write, whether for publication or not, one “because an undescribed world was too lonely”. And yet. The bigger issue is the things that cannot be said, are not said, or are lost in transit or translation (whether by accident or design). Silence. Gaps. Absence. Loss.

“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.”

There are three main narrators, but secondary sources (paratexts?), often with unknown or misattributed authorship, are key to the plot: letters, photos, obituaries, drawings, and books that may be “not unlike the truth”. Things are further muddied by mentions of real-life people (JL Borges, for instance), people who are real in Krauss’ book and are central to works of fiction within it, and a couple of characters who may not be real, even in that fictional realm. Where is truth?

2. Who Am I?

I thought I knew who I was. I don’t need to investigate or assert the truth of my identity in any legalistic sense, but like Alma S, I’m named after someone. Unlike her, I chose to claim my name for myself, rather than learn more about the one whose name I bear.

And yet. Of all the labels I can ascribe myself, many are in relation to others: mother, daughter, wife, friend, even English, British, European. I am not myself alone - even when it might feel like it. I can claim membership of numerous collective identities. Even as a reader, I am connected to other readers, as well as authors and their creations.

Silence. Gaps. Absence. Loss

“I lost the sound of laughter. I lost a pair of shoes… I lost the only woman I wanted to love. I lost years. I lost books. I lost the house where I was born. And I lost Isaac. So who is to say that somewhere along the way… I didn’t also lose my mind?”

The characters on these pages have variously lost lovers, a parent, a child, their homeland, their health, their mission, and acknowledgement of their authorship, and some are concerned with extinctions at a species-wide level. And yet. Like Tennyson’s Ulysses, they continue "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".

Survival may happen by accident, but it usually continues by will. While some focus on practical skills, most concentrate on ways to enhance and prolong life, and thus delay death - whether their own or someone else’s.

And yet. Krauss offers no easy answers, or even any definite ones. Just as there are many permutations to define who we are, so there are many, sometimes contradictory, ways to endure loss:
Notice and be noticed - or hide to survive?
Keep things the same - or change everything?
Acknowledge and remember - or forget in order to live?
Tell people you love them - or ask them to “Love me less”?
Look forward - or look back?
Develop rituals and superstitions - or apply cold logic?
“Sacrifice the world” to “to hold on to a certain feeling”
Fill the gaps with facts or fiction - or…

Learn to appreciate the beauty found in absence: the silence between notes of music, the pauses of punctuation:
"Where he saw a page of words, his friend saw the field of hesitations, black holes, and possibilities between the words. Where his friend saw dappled light, the felicity of flight, the sadness of gravity, he saw the solid form of the common sparrow."


Image of leaf/bird by Ukranian architect Oleg Shuplyak.

This isn’t a trite message about seeing the silver lining, but about finding a different way to see, to experience, to live, while acknowledging and appreciating who or what is missing.
“He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it.”

1. What is Love?

I am fortunate that the tragedies in my life have been minor compared with those experienced by the characters here. The cultural context and the smattering of Yiddish words are largely unfamiliar to me, too. And yet. Krauss spoke to me from these pages: to me, of me, and of others.

“I tried to make sense of things. It could be my epitaph.”
Sometimes, even if I've really enjoyed a book, I find myself thinking "And yet."
Not with this. Not even a little bit.
I guess that means it's perfect - even if I can’t adequately explain why, nor answer this final question.
I am a reader. Krauss is a writer. I am in awe.

Quotes

•t“Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”
•t“The boy became a man who became invisible. In this way he escaped death.”
•t“At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same.”
•t“The truth is a thing I invented so I could live.”
•t“All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen.”
•t“The words of our childhood [Yiddish]... became strangers to us… Life demanded a new language.”
•t“The traffic lights bled into the puddles.”
•t“Life is a beauty… and a joy forever.” Later, “Life is beautiful… and a joke forever.”
•t“In the most important moment of his life he had chosen the wrong sentence.”
•t“What is not known about Zvi Litvitoff is endless... These things were lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone ever taking the time to write it all down.”
•t“Holding hands… is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.”
•t“Some were bought and read, many were bought and not read, some were given as gifts, some sat fading in bookstore windows serving as landing docks for flies, some were marked up with pencil, and a good many were sent to the paper compactor, where they were shredded to a pulp along with other unread or unwanted book, their sentences parsed and minced in the machine’s spinning blades.”
•tA writer imagines books “As a flock of… homing pigeons that could flap their wings and return to him to report on how many tears shed, how many laughs, how many passages read aloud, how many cruel closings of the cover after barely reading a page, how many never opened at all.”
•t“Only now my son was gone did I realise how much I’d been living for him.”
•t“I’ve always arrived too late for my life.”
•t“I thought it would be strange to live in the world without her in it. And yet. I’d gotten used to living with her memory a long time ago.”
•t“The door between the lives we could have led and the lives we had led had shut.”
•t“The grammar of my life:... wherever there appears a plural, correct for the singular.”
•tNot everyone stays in love:
JM married young “before we knew enough about disappointment, and once we did we found we reminded each other of it.”
Another says, “It’s hard to imagine any kind of anything - happiness or otherwise - without her. I’ve lived with Frances so long.”
•t“She seemed to pull light and gravity to the place where she stood.”
•t“Perhaps this is what it means to be a father - to teach your child to live without you. If so, no one was a greater father than I.”
•t“At the end, all that’s left of you are your possessions… 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.”
•t“To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape.”
•t“After my Uncle Julian left, my mother became more withdrawn, or maybe a better word would be obscure, as in faint, unclear, distant.”
•t“In another room, my mother slept curled next to the warmth of a pile of books.”
•t“FOR MY GRANDPARENTS who taught me the opposite of disappearing and FOR JONATHAN, my life.“
•t“Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved a girl, and her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”


Further Notes

I have jotted down lists about the story, characters, and themes, showing the many and complex connections, n  HEREn, but it is not a review (this one is), and it’s full of spoilers.

Reread

Read in January 2016 and again in July 2016. This review was updated slightly, and my further notes/appendix one significantly.

The reread was a bit like watching The Sixth Sense for the second or subsequent time: at least as good, but utterly different. The multi-threaded plot is so cleverly woven, and once you know the pattern, you spot all the little threads early on. In particular, on first reading, I didn't pay much attention to the irritating and self-important little brother, so his actual importance came as something of a shock. Knowing the outcome meant I was more interested in and sympathetic to him, and even more appreciative of the book as a whole.


Image sources
A heart, like the one used to represent Leo Gursky:
https://openclipart.org/image/2400px/...
Leaf/bird:
http://amazingdata.com/amazing-pictur...

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's lists. Each of her sections of the book is written in list form. It gets old after a while, even though it's an interesting conceit.

The introduction of Bird, Alma's brother, as a new narrator in the last 30 or so pages of the novel. I would've preferred Krauss to find another narrative device or incorporate him more fully into the rest of the book.

3. What I am not sure about yet

The structure of the ending. Bringing Alma and Leo's narrative voices together in alternating pages is a neat trick, but it involves a rather major shift in tone and pacing. What I liked about the first 80-85% of the book had a lot to do with the reflective nature of the story's development. Here, suddenly, we are moving forward in what is essentially real time and are given only short sections of each narrative voice at a time.

The content of the ending. Without giving much away here, I will say that the concluding scene felt as if it wanted to be deep and meaningful, but was rather hollow instead. There is one major revelation, but it is not one that takes on the relationship between Leo and Alma (either Alma). The reader is left hanging regarding Leo and Alma as well as Leo and his book(s).

4. What else to say

Despite my hesitations about the end of the novel, it gets four stars for its compelling characters and its ability to create a mood through the development of those characters.

I began this book at about 11 pm, thinking I would get a jump on it before finishing it tomorrow, but it is now 3:30 am and I have just finished the book. I did not want to stop reading it and couldn't put it down until I reached the ending. Perhaps it is that ability to draw the reader in and make her read well past her bedtime in anticipation that makes the lightweight ending so disappointing.

9.75/10

لطفاً این کتاب را بخوانید.
از سریعترین راهی که میتونید همین الان یک کتاب رو تهیه کنید، بعداً میتونید برای خودتون، خانواده و دوستاتون بخرید.
وقتی خواندید یا حتی همزمان که میخوانید در تمام شبکه‌های اجتماعی مطرحش کنید، به همه توصیه کنید و اینجا من منتظر نظرات و نقدهای زیباتون هستم.


8 تنها چیزی که می‌خواهم این است که روزی که دیده نشده‌ام نمیرم.

10 کرک موهای سفیدت مانند گل قاصدک نیمه شکفته‌ای‌ست که به آرامی پیرامون سرت بازی می‌کند. بارها وسوسه شده‌ام سرت را فوت کنم و آرزویی بکنم. تنها آخرین بارقه نزاکت است که مانعم می‌شود.

13 هیچ یهودی در امان نبود. بین مردم شایعات غیرقابل تصوری بود که چون نمی‌توانستیم تصورشان کنیم باورشان هم نکردیم، تا اینکه راهی برایمان نماند و دیر شد.

25 همیشه تلفن می‌کنند که چیزی بفروشند. یکبار گفتند اگر یک چک 99 دلاری برایشان بفرستم بدون وثیقه مشمول دریافت یک کارت اعتباری خواهم شد. من هم گفتم بله قطعا، اگر هم از زیر ماتحت یک کفتر رد بشوم مشمول دریافت یک مشت فضله خواهم شد.

163 یاد گرفت با حقیقت زندگی کند. نه اینکه آن را بپذیرد، بلکه با آن زندگی کند. مثل زندگی کردن با یک فیل بود. اتاقش خیلی کوچک بود، و هر روز صبح فقط برای اینکه به دستشویی برود باید به زور از کنار حقیقت رد می‌شد‌ برای رسیدن به گنجه لباس و برداشتن لباس زیرش، باید از زیر حقیقت میخزید و دعا می‌کرد که نخواهد همان لحظه روی صورتش بنشیند. شب‌ها که چشمانش را می‌بست، معلق بودن آن را بالای سرش احساس می‌کرد.

173 در نهایت، فقط متعلقات از او به جای می‌مانند. شاید برای همین من هرگز نتوانستم چیزی را دور بریزم. شاید به همین دلیل جهان را تلنبار می‌کردم: به این امید که وقتی مردم، مجموع تمام چیزهایم نشانگر زندگی ای باشد بزرگتر از آنچه گذرانده بودم.

184 چرا همیشه اسم مرده ها را روی آدم‌ها می‌گذارند؟ اگر قرار است اسم چیزی را رویشان بگذارند، چرا از روی چیزهای ماندنی تری مثل آسمان یا دریا نمی‌گذارند، یا حتی افکار، که حتی بدهایشان هم هرگز واقعا نمی‌میرند؟

I really enjoyed this book. The writing was beautiful. There were several passages that were really moving and almost poetic. I loved the points of view of Leo Gursky's. I really enjoyed all of the points of view but his spoke to me, they moved me, I didn't want them to end. I am taking a quote from the back of the book because it sums up the book beautifully:

"From the Twentieth-century Jewish experience of dislocation Nicole Krauss has constructed - with nods to Bellow and Singer and a kiss blown across the gulf of years to Bruno Schulz - a stirring, soulful novel that speaks to our own loses and loves. This book will break your heart and at once mend it." - Ken Klfus.

It's been years since I got through a whole book and wondered , what the hell did I just read? I have to admit that even at 1/3 of the way through my interest was waning, but as it was a group read I toughed it out. It really became a jigsaw puzzle for me, skipping from place to place and time frame to time frame very frequently and to top it all of characters names were even repeated. By time I got done I was just reading words. Maybe someday when my concentration is better I'll reread this , or then again maybe not . 2 stars

4,5*

Acho que tenho de reler este livro antes de escrever alguma coisa sobre ele...

Nicole Krauss (n. 1974)

6 Estrelas Amorosas

”a história do amor” (2005) é o segundo romance da escritora norte-americana Nicole Krauss (n. 1974), ex-mulher do famoso escritor Jonathan Safran Foer (n. 1977), com quem foi casada desde 2004 e de quem se separou em 2014, com dois filhos em comum.
”a história do amor” é um romance com três narradores: Leo Gursky, Alma Singer e Zvi Litvinoff, uma narrativa complexa e misteriosa, uma “história” sobre a dor e a perda do amor e sobre um manuscrito “perdido”, “um-livro-dentro-de-um livro”, capítulos que descrevem viagens "imaginárias", por caminhos labirínticos, onde as emoções dominam, ora trágicas ora divertidas, entre o que é "visível" e o que se torna "invisível".

NOTA: Quem tencionar ler ”a história do amor” não deve – mesmo – “abrir” o “spoiler”.

No início de ”a história do amor” Leo Gursky é um judeu idoso, que vive sozinho num minúsculo apartamento em Manhattan, Nova Iorque, que fugiu da cidade de Slonim, ora na Polónia ora na Rússia, para a América, depois do fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial, sobrevivendo à barbárie mantendo-se escondido, sendo acolhido por um primo que era serralheiro e que lhe ensinou o ofício, Até que um dia estava a olhar pela janela… e de repente foi como se um elefante me tivesse pisado o coração. Caí de joelhos. Pensei: não vivi para sempre… Levei bastante tempo a recuperar e nunca mais voltei a trabalhar.” (Pág. 12)
Leo Gursky “Quando era miúdo queria escrever. Era a única coisa que queria fazer da minha vida. Inventei pessoas imaginárias e enchi cadernos e cadernos com as suas histórias.”… “E no entanto. Já mais velho, decidi que queria ser um escritor a sério. Tentei escrever sobre coisas reais. Queria descrever o mundo, porque viver num mundo por descrever era uma solidão tremenda. Escrevi três livros antes de fazer vinte e um anos, sabe Deus o que lhes aconteceu.” (Pág. 15)
”Por vezes acreditava que a última página do meu livro e a última página da minha vida eram uma e a mesma coisa, que quando o meu livro acabasse, também eu acabaria…” (Pág. 17)
”Era uma vez um rapaz que amava uma rapariga, e o riso dela era uma pergunta que ele queria passar a vida inteira a responder.” (Pág. 20)
”Era uma vez um homem que se tornara invisível que chegou à América.” (Pág. 21)
”Era uma vez uma mulher que tinha sido uma rapariga e tinha vindo de barco para a América… (Pág. 22)
Leo Gursky amou Alma Mereminski, que fizera a viagem para a América alguns anos antes, mas Deixaste de escrever. Julguei que tinhas morrido E se o homem que outrora fora rapaz que prometera nunca mais se apaixonar por ninguém até morrer foi fiel à sua promessa, não foi por teimosia nem mesmo por lealdade. Era mais forte do que ele. (Pág. 23)
E depois há Isaac Moritz, filho de Alma Mereminski, mais tarde Alma Moritz, que cresce e se torna num escritor famoso.
O segundo narrador é Alma Singer, uma menina de catorze anos de idade que vive em Brooklyn, Nova Iorque, baptizada pela sua mãe “… em honra de todas as personagens femininas de um livro que o meu pai lhe oferecera chamado A História do Amor.” (Pág. 50), que tem um irmão mais novo, Emanuel Chaim, mas toda a gente o chamava “Bird” - o "Messias". O seu pai David Singer conhecera a sua mãe, Charlotte, num kibutz em Israel, tinha estado no exército e viajara pela América do Sul, tornando-se mais tarde engenheiro. 10. MUDARAM-SE PARA NOVA IORQUE E TIVERAM-ME A MIM. Quando Alma 11. … TINHA SEIS ANOS FOI DIAGNOSTICADO UM CANCRO DO PÂNCREAS AO MEU PAI.18. A MINHA MÃE NUNCA SE DEPAIXONOU DO MEU PAI. Inesperadamente, Charlotte Singer, que é tradutora, recebe uma carta de Jacob Marcus para traduzir um livro, a única obra publicada de Zvi Litvinoff, traduzindo-a do espanhol para inglês.
Por fim surge, Zvi Litvinoff, ”Quase tudo o que se sabe acerca de Zvi Litvinoff provém da introdução que a sua mulher escreveu para uma reedição d´a história do amor alguns anos depois de ele morrer. O tom da sua prosa, sensível e obscura, é colorido pela devoção de uma pessoa que dedicou a sua vida à arte de outrem.” (Pág. 87)
Zvi Litvinoff viveu no Chile depois de ter emigrado da Polónia após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, conhecendo a sua mulher Rosa em Valparaíso, no Outono de 1951, até à sua morte em 1978.
O livro a história do amor foi originalmente escrito em yiddish é traduzido para espanhol pela sua mulher Rosa. Foram publicados dois mil exemplares ”… d´A História do Amor como um bando de dois mil pombos capazes de bater asas e voltar para contar quantas lágrimas derramadas, quantas gargalhadas, quantas passagens lidas em voz alta, quantos exemplares cruelmente abandonados ao fim da primeira página, quantos exemplares que nunca chegaram sequer a ser abertos.” (Pág. 94)
Até que a dona de uma livraria de livros em segunda mão descobre um ”… exemplar bolorento d´a história do amor… A dona da loja não tentou impingir o livro a nenhum dos seus clientes. Sabia que nas mãos erradas um tal livro poderia ser facilmente descartado ou, pior ainda, ficar por ler. Em vez disso, deixou-o ficar onde estava, na esperança de que viesse a ser descoberto pelo leitor certo.
E foi o que aconteceu. Uma bela tarde um jovem alto viu o livro na montra. Entrou na loja, pegou nele, leu algumas páginas e levou-o até à caixa registadora.... assinou o seu nome: David Singer.
Começou então a ler, eivado de desejo e inquietude.” (Pág. 99 – 100)


"Flowchart" by JoV



”a história do amor" é um romance inovador que explora magistralmente várias temáticas: o amor e a perda, a solidão e a morte, a tristeza e a família, a religião e o judaísmo, “um-livro-dentro-de-um livro”, com uma prosa extremamente versátil, discorrendo sobre a literatura, em especial, sobre escritores como Isaac Babel, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Leo Tolstoy, Rubén Darío e Pablo Neruda e Bruno Schulz, com um excelente suspense, onde várias “histórias” se vão entrelaçando, com avanços e recuos no espaço e no tempo, conjugando admiravelmente os vários estilos narrativos, distintos para cada um dos narradores, incluindo, entradas de diários, cartas, listas, traduções, trechos d´”a história do amor”.
Nicole Krauss conduz-nos por caminhos misteriosos, abrindo-nos as portas do passado, libertando-nos da solitude e do desânimo e no final Leo e Alma acabam por unir de uma forma surpreendente as “palavras”…
"Há tantas palavras que se perdem. Mal saem da boca perdem a coragem, errando sem objectivo até serem engolidas pela valeta como folhas secas.
...
Houve um tempo em que não era invulgar usar-se um bocado de fio para orientar as palavras que de outro modo poderiam perder-se pelo caminho e não chegar aos seus destinos.
...
Às vezes não há fio nenhum que seja suficiente comprido para dizer aquilo que é preciso dizer. Em tais casos a única coisa que o fio pode fazer, qualquer que seja a sua forma, é conduzir o silêncio de uma pessoa.” (Pág. 146 – 147)
Não é por acaso que Nicole Krauss recebeu 4 milhões de dólares pelos dois seus próximos livros a publicar pela “Harper” – “Late Wonder” e ”How to Be a Man” - contos.
Inesquecível…


"Era uma vez um rapaz que amava uma rapariga, e o riso dela era uma pergunta que ele queria passar a vida inteira a responder." (Pág. 20)

n  "Os sentimentos não são tão antigos como o tempo."n (Pág. 141)

"Há tantas palavras que se perdem. Mal saem da boca perdem a coragem, errando sem objectivo até serem engolidas pela valeta como folhas secas." (Pág. 146)

"... há dois tipos de pessoas no mundo: aqueles que preferem estar tristes com os outros e aqueles que preferem estar tristes sozinhos." (Pág. 201)

I tried, I really tried.

This came and went through my Libby queue more than once. The beginning started wonderful. A grumpy man figuring out old age and illness. Then it just got messy. A girl on a quest to match her lonely mother to a man, a book translation, and otherwise chaos.

I've read Krauss' To Be a Man and felt the same: confusing and wordy.

Writers writing about writers can get dull quickly.

Also, POV shifting can be confusing.

I know many people loved this book. Unfortunately, it fell flat for me.

2/5