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 they became real, flesh and blood people. Sometimes non-linear storylines bother me. And I’ve begun to think that is because most writers are not capable of telling a story somewhat out-of-order without making it confusing. Nicole Krauss successfully employed the mechanism in The History of Love and I loved it. I kept reading to find out what it all meant. I kept reading to be surprised--and I was, pleasantly so.

There are three concurrent storylines: Leo Gursky, an 80-something Polish-American immigrant who moved to New York to escape the Nazis. He lost his family, his dignity, his youth, and when he successfully arrived in New York five years later, he discovered that the girl he’d loved since the age of 10, the girl whose “kiss was a question he wanted to spend the rest of his life answering” had married another, assuming Leo had been a casualty in the war.

Alma Singer is a teen girl, living with her mother and younger brother. Her father had died of cancer when she was a child. Alma was named for the character of an obscure book, The History of Love, written by Zvi Litvinoff. Her brother suspects he could be the messiah and her mother is still mourning the loss of her husband and has shown no interest in dating or ever marrying again. This concerns Alma.

Zvi Litvinoff is the author of The History of Love, a book that was originally written in Yiddish and thinly printed/released in Spanish. Litvinoff is dead before the beginning of the novel so the portions of his story are told posthumously.

Krauss keeps you guessing as to what these characters have in common and it’s not immediately apparent how these three characters are connected but by the end, everything is revealed and this story of missed connections, love lost, pride, humanity, sadness, aging and what could have been, all comes together. If I hadn’t finished this book in a public place, I probably would have cried tears of happiness, and the whole time my heart would have been breaking. It was very touching. Fantastic story. Excellent.

من تیکه های روح و قلبم رو تو این کتاب جا گذاشتم. کلمات بودند و عشق و عشق و عشق ... بعضی صفحات رو چندین بار میخوندم و هر لحظه ترس از تموم شدن کتاب احاطه ام میکرد، دلم میخواست روزها طول بکشه و شاید ماه ها. دویست و شصت صفحه ی دوست داشتنی، دلتنگ و سرشار از حسرت، شبیه حالِ این روزهای زندگی من ...

I am clearly out of step with the rest of the readers of this book. Everyone else loved it. Me? I just did not get it. I didn't in any way connect emotionally to the book. I could not keep the characters straight. Every time I would come back to the book after taking a break (even just an hour later) I would have to re-read a couple of pages to remind myself where I was in the story and which character was speaking. It would have been helpful, for example, to put the character's name and time period at the start of each section to make it easier for the reader to follow along and keep each storyline straight.

Because there are some stories that start slow, but everything comes together beautifully at the end, I kept reading this book, hoping it would get better. Actually forcing myself to keep reading. But, for me, it never got better. There was no climactic ending that made the whole rest of the story worth it.

I tasselli compongono questa storia lentamente, senza fretta.
Ci sono momenti in cui non si è certi di riuscire a capire fino in fondo e in cui si ha paura di perdere qualche sfumatura.
Momenti in cui invece si è sicuri di aver capito tutto e di aver finalmente compreso l'ordine delle cose e con esso il senso della vita.
Invece non è vero niente, ogni particolare ha la sua importanza e fino a quando l'ultimo tassello non avrà più trovato il suo posto nel mosaico, la storia dell'amore non sarà completa.

Non ricordare nulla di questo romanzo, ma proprio nulla, se non il fatto che all'epoca si diceva che la parte letteraria della coppia, fra Krauss e Safran Foer, fosse proprio lei (addì 2 marzo 2018).

Cred că e a doua sau a treia lectură...

Nicole Krauss povestește în mare viața unui evreu, Leopold Gursky. Mai evreu decît acest evreu doar evreii lui Philip Roth pot fi. Aflăm despre el (la Gursky, mă refer) că s-a născut în Polonia, unde a iubit-o pe Alma. Că a scris un roman intitulat Istoria iubirii (aș fi dat alt titlu acestei cărți) tocmai pentru Alma. Că fata a emigrat în SUA, prin 1939, și că el a rămas pe toată durata războiului în Polonia. S-a ascuns în păduri, a suferit de foame. Dar a supraviețuit și a plecat și el în State. Din păcate, Alma a crezut că prietenul ei a murit și s-a măritat cu un fabricant. Deși nu-l iubește, nu are curajul să-l părăsească.

Treptat intriga se complică. Nicole Krauss a înnodat prea mult firul epic, romanul e plin de coincidențe, prea mult hazard dirijat. E singura ei greșeală, una de construcție narativă.

Romanul e salvat însă de protagonist. Leopold Gursky, scriitorul, rămîne un personaj absolut memorabil. Cinic, ironic, înțelept, împăcat, senin. Nu-și face iluzii. Lucrează lipsit de orice chef la un nou roman. Are un singur prieten, la fel de bătrîn ca și el, Bruno, un coleg din copilărie. Relația lor este de un haz total. Se insultă unul pe celălalt, se ceartă adeseori, stau bosumflați în casă, nu-și vorbesc cu zilele și, în cele din urmă, inevitabil, se împacă.

Leo face de toate. Odată e chemat la miezul nopții să repare o yală, fusese lăcătuș, primește 100 de dolari, o fericire: se poate întoarce acasă cu taxiul. Altă dată, merge într-o școală de pictură, la o ședință, și pozează studenților ca model pînă înțepenește. Primește 15 dolari. Îi cumpără bomboane lui Bruno.

Nicole Krauss are invenție epică (poate prea multă aici), știe să lege și să dezlege nodurile. Recunosc ceva din stilul sarcastic al lui Philip Roth, menționat, de altfel, în carte. Dar numele cel mai des invocat este cel al lui Bruno Schulz: „În dimineaţa asta am terminat Strada crocodililor pentru a treia oară. O găsesc aproape insuportabil de frumoasă”. Într-un cuvînt, Istoria iubirii e un roman foarte bun. Ar fi trebuit să fie povestea unei vieți nefericite (și chiar este), dar Leo Gursky îl salvează prin umor, seninătate și resemnare.

P. S. Am văzut nu de mult filmul lui Radu Mihăileanu după roman. M-a dezamăgit. Mi s-a părut că a urmărit prea literal cartea lui Nicole Krauss. Și m-a făcut să o răsfoiesc din nou. Căutați, așadar, Istoria iubirii, e o lectură binefăcătoare. Leo Gursky are ceva de spus pînă și celui mai nenorocit dintre muritori.

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 this book might go on my list of Top Ten favorites. Oh, how I loved Leo's thoughts and his "But." and "And yet." sentences. So stretchy. Those frequently used simple sentences created a narrative of yearning and unfufillment that perfectly expressed Leo's character's disappointment in life.

When it was Alma's turn to speak and disclose, I wasn't nearly so infatuated. Her thoughts and questions lacked the honesty and pain that the much older Leo was able to possess, which makes sense as Alma was only fourteen. Still, I persevered and even enjoyed the minute and slow discoveries she was making.

This book is almost a mystery. The hows and the whys are confusing and it isn't until the end that the missing key is given which opens up the full heartache and confusion of all the characters. Unfortunately, by this time, I was much less enchanted with the entire story as I found way too many parallels with her husband's book that I had already read. They are both about Jewish people divided by a generation who come together through letters. They are both set in New York City with flashbacks to Germany during World War II. They both involve extremely precocious and unnaturally odd children who lose a parent and deal with their grief by setting out on an expedition of discovery. And they both end abysmally disappointing with dysfunction winning over true love. Sigh.

I think I would have loved this book had I read it first or only. Sadly, both books feel tainted to me now. Like, maybe....in a perfect world, I could have enjoyed Singing Bee on NBC. But then Fox came out with Don't Forget the Lyrics. Same idea, different show...I enjoy neither because I don't like copying.

These books don't plagiarize each other or anything, but there are too many similarities for either to be the original and the great books that they are supposed to me. Maybe they need to set their typewriters up in different

My review of this wonderful book is n  HEREn.

What follows below is not a review. This page is a collection of lists about the story, characters, and themes, showing the many and complex connections between them, but without any emotional response or analysis.

It is almost entirely made up of spoilers, so don't read it if you have not read the book - and maybe not even then.

Seriously, this is FULL of spoilers. Please think before you click.

Chapters and Narrators in Nicole Krauss’ “History of Love”


Each narrator or point of view is marked by a symbol:
Leo = anatomical heart
Alma Singer = compass
Omniscient narrator telling of Zvi Litvinoff = open book
Bird Singer = ark

p1. The Last Words on Earthttttt - Leo
p35. My Mother’s Sadnesstttt - Alma S
p65. Forgive Metttt - Omniscient / Zvi
p75. A Joy Forevertttttt - Leo
p93. My Father’s Tentttttt - Alma S
p110. The Trouble with Thinkingtt - Omniscient / Zvi
p119. Until the Writing Hand Hurtstttt - Leo
p135. Floodtttttt - Alma S
ttp153, Here We Are Togetherttt - Omniscient / Zvi
p160. Die Laughingtttttt - Leo
tp170. If Not, Notttttt - Alma S
ttp183. The Last Pagetttt - Omniscient / Zvi
tp192. My Life Under Watertttt - Alma S
ttp203. One Nice Thingtttt - Bird
p208. The Last Time I Saw Youtttt - Leo
ttp213. Would a Lamed Vovnik Do This?t - Bird
p219. A+Lttttttt - Alma S and Leo


The Three Books Young Leo Writes for Alma M


1.tAbout their home town of Slonim, but Alma “liked it better when I made things up.”
2.tHe made it all up, but Alma said “I shouldn’t make up everything, because that made it hard to believe anything.”
3.t"I didn’t write about real things and I didn’t write about imaginary things. I wrote about the only things I knew.”


Chapters of the Fictional “The History of Love” Mentioned in Krauss’s one


There are 39 chapters, but only these are named and described, strange and beautiful allegories all - except the last:

(Introduction to reprint, by Rosa Litvinoff)
1. The Age of Silence, p72: “The first language humans had was gestures.”
10. The Age of Glass, p61: “Everyone believed some part of him or her to be extremely fragile.”
??. The Birth of Feeling (one of the first 15 chaps), p106: “There was a first time joy was felt, and a first time for sadness.”
14. The Age of String, p111: “It wasn’t uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words.”
18. Love Among the Angels, p185: Angels sleep badly, can’t smell, and don’t fall in love.
39. The Death of Leopold Gursky, p255.


Obituaries Written by Leo as a Young Man


When Leo is ill and possibly dying, Zvi, who writes obituaries for a newspaper, finds a collection of obituaries by Leo, including:
•tThe Death of Isaac Babel (a (real) writer who had just died in the story and about whom Zvi had just published an obituary)
•tFranz Kafka is Dead
•tThe Death of Tolstoy
•tThe Death of Osip Mandelstam
•tThe Death of Leopold Gursky


Leo’s Final Book


The book he writes after his heart attack and eventually sends to Isaac is “Words for Everything” - contradicting what Alma M (Isaac’s mother) told him when they were both children and he was writing for her.


Isaac Moritz’s Books


1. The Remedy – award-winning best seller
2. Glass Houses – short stories
3. Sing
4. ? - novel
5. ? - novel
6. (Words for Everything – found among his papers after his death)


Real Books and Writers


•t“The Street of Crocodiles” by Bruno Schulz is read by “Jacob Marcus” and then Alma S
•t“The Little Prince” by Saint-Exupéry, read to Alma S by her father.
•tJorge Luis Borges is said to live near to Zvi and to a plot-critical bookshop in Valparaiso.
•tCervantes is read and translated by Charlotte Singer, as are the poems of Nicanor Parra.
•tNeruda and Dario are read and compared by Zvi and Rosa, when courting.
•t “The Destruction of the European Jews” by Raul Hilberg.


Fictitious Books and Writers


•t“The History of Love”, read to Alma S as a child, given to her mother by her father, with the dedication, “This is the book I would have written for you if I could write.” She is named after Alma in the book. It was also read to “Jacob Marcus”, many years ago (probably by Alma M).
•t“Life as We Don’t Know It” by Daniel Eldridge. A book of David Singer’s, given to Alma S on her 14th birthday by her mother.
•t“How to Survive in the Wild” (three volumes) belonged to David Singer and is read by his daughter Alma.
•t“Edible Plants and Flora of North America” (three volumes – but also what Alma S calls her notebooks)
•t“The Book of Jewish Thoughts”
•t“The History of the Jews” (18 volumes!)
•t“The Incredible, Fantastic Adventures of Frankie, Toothless Girl Wonder”, by Leopold Gursky (a different one)


Characters who Write


Published writers:
•tLeo Gursky – but not under his own name
•tZvi Litvinoff – but not his own words
•tIsaac Moritz
•tCharlotte Singer - translations from Hebrew and Spanish into English

Others whose writings and jottings are central to the plot:
•tAlma Singer – diary/notebook, letters to Russian penpal then Misha, and forged letters (to “Jacob Marcus”)
•tBird Singer – diary, forged notes (to Leo and Alma M)
•tRosa Litvinoff – introduction to reissue of History of Love, forged letter (to Leo)
•t“Jacob Marcus” - letters
•tUncle Julian (Charlotte Singer’s brother) – letters, and book about Giacometti


Words/Names


•tAlma M tells Leo “there isn’t a word for everything”.
•tLearning (English) words is part of Leo and Alma M’s courting.
•tThe book Leo writes as an old man is called “Words for Everything”.
•tAlma S and Bird play a game of NOT words: pointing to a chair and saying “This is not a chair”, for example.
•tBird writes God’s name on things so they can’t be thrown away.
•tThe janitor buries damaged siddurs with great respect because they have God’s name on.


Loss: Who and What’s Been Lost by Whom


•tGirlfriend: Leo
•tPossible girlfriend: Zvi
•tBoyfriend: Alma S
•tHusband: Charlotte
•tFather: Isaac (sort of), Alma S, and Bird
•tParents: Leo
•tSiblings: Leo
•tChild: Leo
•tHomeland: Leo, Alma M, Zvi
•tHealth: Leo
•tMission: Bird
•tAuthorship: Leo (twice)


Identity: Who’s Not Who or What


•tIsaac Moritz is not Mordecai Moritz’s son, he’s Leo’s.
•tLeo Gursky discovers there’s a writer of children’s books who shares his name.
•tLeo’s first book, “The History of Love”, written in Yiddish, is published in Spanish under the name of his friend, Zvi Litvinoff.
•tLeo’s second book, “Words for Everything” is erroneously published under Isaac’s name, because Leo posted it to Isaac, and when Isaac dies, the manuscript is on his desk.
•t“Jacob Marcus”, who commissions the translation of “The History of Love” from Spanish to English, is the name of a character in Isaac Moritz’s book, “The Remedy”.
•tAlma S writes to “Jacob Marcus”, pretending to be her mother.
•tWhen Alma S asks about her ethnic background, she’s given a bewildering array of equally valid permutations. She concludes she’s American. Bird says she’s Jewish.
•tAlma M is a real person in Krauss’ book who is fictionalised in the fictional “The History of Love”.
•tWhat about Bruno? He’s Leo’s childhood friend, reunited in later life, now living in the flat above. They look out for each other, they “tap, tap” on the pipes to check each is still alive… And yet. At times, I wondered if adult Bruno was a figment of Leo’s imagination, or an alter ego: “The friend I didn’t have… the greatest character I ever wrote.”
•tBird would never answer to his real name. Eventually, a nickname stuck instead.
•tBird struggles with whether he is a Lamed Vovnik or not (one of the thirty-six righteous Jews upon whom the continued existence of the world depends).


Connections and Coincidences


•tSurvival
The underlying theme is emotional survival, but Alma S and Bird are explicitly interested in more physical survival: Alma in the wild, and Bird from a great flood (though previously, Bird was injured jumping from a window).

•tFlood
Rosa lies about a flood, and then creates one. Bird prepares for one. One of Alma S’s chapters is titled “My Life Underwater”.

•tLife drawing
Leo sits for a life drawing class, and Alma S attends a life drawing class. She goes through a phase of wearing her father’s oversized sweater. On his way to the class, Leo passes a girl in a large sweater, with holes in it.

•tSilence
Chapter 1 of the fictional “The History of Love” is "The Age of Silence", and silence, and what is unsaid, are recurring themes of Krauss’ book of the same title.

•tGlass
Chapter 10 of the fictional “The History of Love” is "The Age of Glass", and Isaac Moritz's second book is called "Glass Houses".

•tSing(er)
One of Isaac’s books is titled “Sing”, and Singer is the surname of David, Charlotte, Alma and Bird.

•tLocks
Leo is a locksmith: “The world’s doors… are never truly locked to me”, but he can’t unlock the truth: “I was a locksmith… And yet I couldn’t unlock anything I wanted to unlock”. But he carves his initials on locks.
Zvi Litvinoff hides his guilty secret “locked with a key he thought he’d hidden”.
Others lock out people and experiences.

•tPhotos
Leo wanted to take a picture of Alma M every day.
When his cousin made a pin-hole camera, three attempts at photographing Leo yielded nothing, “I’d lost whatever the thing is that makes people indelible.”
In later life, Leo makes regular visits to a photobooth to record his own aging, “the opposite of disappearing”.
Old Leo keeps a slide projector under his bed for “special occasions”.
There’s a photo of Charlotte Singer that no one has seen, taken by a blind man, of which Alma S says, “I think there is a moral to this story, but I don’t know what it is”.
Leo steals a photo of him and Alma M from the house of Isaac’s half brother, Bernard.
Zvi has a single framed photo of a boy and a girl – but it’s (probably) him and his siter Miriam, not Leo and Alma M.
Alma S says: “Every year, the memories I have of my father become more faint, unclear, distant. Once they were vivid and true, then they became like photographs, and now they are more like photographs of photographs.”
Charlotte talks to a photo of her dead husband.

•tMemories
They fade like photos, as Alma S realises.
Alma S makes a list of thirteen memories passed down to her by her mother.
Father can’t be replaced in mother’s affections because “The memories she had of Dad, memories that soothed her even while they made her sad, because she’d built a world out of them she knew how to survive in, even if no one else could.”
•tThe awkward humour of youthful fumblings
Leo and Alma M, Charlotte and David Singer, Zvi and Rosa Litvinoff, Alma S and Misha, Alma S and Herman.


Ways of Postponing Death


•tHiding (on the run from Nazis): “The boy became a man who became invisible. In this way he escaped death.”
•tLeo proposed to Alma M partly to stop being preoccupied with thoughts of death.
•tBeing seen: old Leo, making a scene, so he wouldn’t die on a day when no one had noticed him.
•tPublishing someone’s words - Zvi’s unconscious justification.
•tReading an obituary of one not yet dead, as an incantation, a prayer for life.
•tHiding an obituary of one not yet dead to buy time: “the page he’d protected all night from becoming real, so that he could buy a little more time - for his friend, for life”.
•tWriting: “At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same.”
•tTelling stories: “The truth is a thing I invented so I could live.”
•tTapping twice for “alive”: Leo/Bruno on water pipes, and in the final scene with Alma S in the park.
•tPrepping/hoarding - for flood or survival in the wild.
•tPraying, “begging God to spare me as long as possible”.
•tLoving.


The History of “The History of Love”


DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE READ THE BOOK. SERIOUSLY.

Leo writes it, in Yiddish, for Alma M.
He gives the manuscript to Zvi for safekeeping.
Zvi translates it into Spanish, changing all the names except Alma’s, and adding Leo’s obituary of Leo as an inexplicable postscript.
Zvi hides the original (buried, then locked away).
It’s published in Chile, under Zvi’s name.
David Singer buys a second-hand copy and gives – and inscribes – it to his wife. They name their daughter Alma.
Someone reads it to “Jacob Marcus” who later commissions Charlotte to translate it from Spanish to English.
After Isaac’s memorial, Leo gets a parcel addressed to him (Leo) containing the History of Love, in English (Bird had printed it out).
Leo had thought the only copy had been lost in a flood, as Rosa had told him in a letter.

Thoroughly enjoyed the book. One of my favorite reads in 2017.
I’ve often found it hard to emotionally involved in a post-modernism book. “And yet.” How could I resist the charm of Leopold Gursky and the One—and-only-forever love? “And yet”. Leopold had little resemblance to a knight in shining armor. First let’s cross out handsome and replace it with silly... Not spoiling any more here.
Besides Leopold, Nicole Krauss treated us with a number of other vivid characters: a precocious 15-year-old girl Alma , while disentangling her own burgeoning love, took on herself to find the Mr. right for her widowed mother; her little brother Bird, believing he was one of the righteous men in Jewish mysticism, set out to save the world, in his case, his sister; Leo’s old friend Litvinoff, plagiarized Leo’s book for far more noble motives than monetary reward; Litvinoff’s wife Rosa, whose love for her husband took her from telling all the way to building life-sized lies.
Some of the most beautiful and thought-provoking sentences scattered around the book were presented as selected chapters of The History of Love, a book LEO wrote at age 20 professing his undying love for Alma. This book in a book served as a thread linking all the characters and the fragmented plots together. This structure, though not original, worked well to enhance the entire book’s literary ambiance.
The book was a poignant portrayal of feelings such as grief, loss, loneliness, fear, despair… Yet these feelings were muted, or tucked under a thin blanket. Instead of heart-wrenching drama, there were plenty of witty humor particularly in Leo’s first-person narratives.
One could label this book as romance, mystery, or family. Every day we are coping, with different things, through different means. But “life is a thing of beauty and a joy forever” said Leo, “and a joke forever.”
For those who like audio books, This production was narrated by four voices. George Guidall’s rendition of Leo was a clear standout—of course, he’s *the* George Guidall! Each deliver of the phrase “and yet” added poetic rhyme to the prose, and will stay with me for quite some time.

There is something bothering me about this book: a lot of readers are completely overwhelmed by it, apparently because it seems to be about (romantic) love; but that's just my point: I have the impression that it's not really about love, or not essentially. Of course, the book in the book "The History of Love" in its title refers to love, but the few excerpts we read about it don’t mention love. And there are the references of 15-year-old diary writing Alma to the close love between her deceased father and her mother, and additionally Alma's love for her parents and vice versa. And of course, we must also mention the love of Leo Gursky for Alma Mereminski, who in her time in Poland apparently was also courted by Ziv Litvinoff and Leo's friend Bruno, but went to America and married a certain Moritz.

If you have not read the book, I can imagine you have already lost your way. Because I have to give credit to Krauss: she brought us a very ingenious constructed story. Only very gradually the connection between the various story lines becomes clear; especially the technique of processing a book in a book, with its very complicated history of origin, is cleverly done; only in the final chapter the whole puzzle comes together. Nicely done, without discussion. Certainly also because Krauss writes very smoothly and uses a very velvet style. Krauss also shows that she is into literature, and can handle a whole palette of language registers: occasionally I thought I was reading a novel by Saul Bellow, or Franz kafka, and there were also clear references to Bruno Schulz.

But what is this all about? Not really about love, so I think. I’m doing a calculated guess: this is a novel about self delusion. Now take the protagonist, Leo Gursky: from the start it is clear that he’s a pitiful old man, and throughout the story that only is strenghtened; Gursky has ruined his own life for a ghost (the old Alma): as a boy he fell in love with this Alma, but she broke his heart (there are several indications throughout the book that Alma was not particular a sympathetic figure), and that trauma became a lifelong obsession for him, turning him into a true loser; he did not even managed to publish his book (others did); in short, his self delusion about this love affair was fatal to him.

Also, the remarkable brother of the younger Alma, "Bird" suffers from self delusion, seeing himself as a kind of prophet (a “lamed Vovnik”); according to his psycho-therapist, that was his way of mourning about his deceased father. Perhaps I have to review my opinion after all: this book indeed is about love, but with a focus on the self delusion it provokes! Or is that the same? Isn’t all love a form of (temporary) self delusion?

Nice games it are that Krauss plays with us, in this handsomely written book. But, with all due respect, I'm still into the dark about what she meant to reveal.

Masterpiece read by audio superstar George Guidall who elevates it all the more, as do the rest of the readers. Totally criminal that the box merely lists 'various narrators,' & here on goodreads, narrators aren't listed.

I love LEO. I really do. And yet.

Alma is such a precociously curious little monster. How precious. And yet.

The writing is beautifully thoughtful. And yet.

The book kept me in the dark and dizzy tunnel for so long that it became frustrating. To literally not know what the hell is going on for hours on end is not my idea of a great novel. And I was so in love with the first half too. And yet.

Yes. And yet...

A beautiful story of a young girl looking to ease her mother's loneliness and an old man still grieving for the loss of the love of his youth. The characters are wonderfully written and the whole book is almost a kind of poem.

I especially loved Leo Gursky the writer who escaped Hitler's holocaust, losing everyone he loved in it but the girl who got out before he did-and losing her to America. Although Leo is a devastated human being, a ruin, he is so touching, funny in a bitter way, tender underneath it all and suffering but enduring, that I just fell in love with him.

14 year old Alma's father has recently died and despite her own grief, Alma is worried about her mother. Her mother is a translator who has recently been approached to translate The History of Love. The questions of who is the real author of the book and who has asked for the translation are part of the mystery story of this book.

The History of Love works on many levels and is incredibly satisfying to read. It is about love and loss and literature. I started rereading as soon as I finished it. So far, it's even better the second time than it was the first!