Disappointing ending & trite, too.
I think the plotting is pretty piss-poor. A very convoluted bifurcated structure of telling a story that hinges on a poor coincidental set of facts, and when you really stop to think about it -- you wonder if you've just spent 200 pages reading and trying to guess at two or three patched up facts that hardly amount to a mystery. Krauss has an engaging storytelling style, even stunning prose at times, punctured with welcome humor, but the strands do not come together for a satisfying ending. The most impressive thing for me was watching two main characters with their want -- one geriatric pining for a son who does not even know who his real father is, and a 14 year old girl whose father's just passed away, trying to deal with it all, and trying to resolve her mother's depression by hooking her up with random men she thinks might be appropriate substitution. There's a lot of potential here, but too much depended on the girl and the geriatric meeting at the end, and neither's predicament or conflict is resolved (akthough Krauss tries to contrive a semblance of resolution, but no cigar for this reader).

Leo is the obvious charmer of this novel, an elderly man who escapes the Nazis as a boy and eventually follows the love of his life to America where he discovers she has married someone else. Leo holds the torch for Alma throughout his long life. He has also written a novel, The History of Love, the manuscript of which he entrusted to a friend and believes forever lost. His novel is the holy spirit of this novel. Every character is profoundly affected by it. Leo didn’t quite charm me as much as Krauss wanted. I found some of the humour too slapstick. It was Alma who won me over.

Alma is the second narrator. She is named after the heroine of Leo’s book which her father loved. Except the book isn’t credited as being authored by Leo and it was published in Chile in Spanish. The first mystery in a succession surrounding this book. Her father is dead when the narrative begins. Alma is a brilliant humorous portrait of an adolescent girl who has lost her father and is dealing with a grief-stricken mother and a traumatised younger brother. Her mother is a translator and is excited when she is commissioned to translate The History of Love into English.

All the characters live obsessively in the past. It's a novel about lost edens, about coming to terms with the present when the past is more inspiring, more magical. But because of its humour and vitality Krauss does a fabulous job of making the present a constant cause for celebration.

It’s one of those novels that, despite its fabulous labyrinthine structure and fresh lively prose, relies very heavily on its charm. It’s up there with A Gentleman in Moscow as the most charming novel I’ve ever read. Krauss probably overeggs the mystery within a mystery (or book within a book) motif, especially towards the end when she drafts in Alma’s brother to contribute some barmy detective work. But ultimately a lovely heartwarming novel written with fizzing joie de vivre about the joys, sorrows and compensations of love.

...novels are defined by their humor and compassion, and the hope they search for among despair.

Probably more of a 3.5 stars, but I fell very hard for one of the characters, Leopold Gursky. His mix of loneliness, melancholy and humor was perfect. He lost his family, his country, the love of his life and his novel about her during the Holocaust in Poland. After arriving in America, he exists but never really lives again, and I can understand this. Here some of my favorite quotes:
All I want is not to die on a day I went unseen., So he volunteers as a nude model for an art class.
The words of our childhood became strangers to us-we couldn't use them in the same way and so we chose not to use them at all. Life demanded a new language.
All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in a world while that which has made me has ceased to exist
A living. I lived. It wasn't easy. And yet. I found out how little is unbearable.
I also enjoyed Alma, especially her relationship with her mother, but I didn't connect to her on the same level as Leo. I think maybe there were too many things happening in the end, and the book lost the impact it had originally. Which does not mean that it wasn't a good book, I would have rated the first half as 5 stars and the second as 3 stars, so definitely still worth the read.

The story: The novel is about three people. The first, Leo Gursky, is an aged Manhattan locksmith who, during his youth in Poland, wrote a novel, "The History of Love," inspired by his love for a girl from his village; he lost both the girl and the manuscript. The second, Alma Singer, is a 14-year-old Brooklynite named after every female character in that novel. The third, Zvi Litvinoff, connects them.

In N.Y.C., a book connects an elderly Polish Jew who lost everything and everyone to the Nazis and a 14 year old girl whose family has burrowed under the grief of her father’s death 8 years earlier. I loved the characters in this novel, especially elderly Leopold. I enjoyed the range of prose, from poetically philosophical to chatty. I was fascinated by the way the two story lines approached and spun around each other, like a well-choreographed dance. On the other hand, I found young Alma to be more a wonderful literary fabrication than a flesh and blood facsimile and the mystery behind the book in her life rather implausible.

Some of the writing in this is too beautiful for words.  And yet, it is clearly all about the words, always.  Lost words, thrown away words, and "the crime of silence".  A first true love, broken pride, a man who thought he was made of glass, a sightless photographer, the loneliness of becoming invisible.  A search for one thing segues into something else entirely.  It will make you contemplate the sadness and loss of an unread book.

Such a beautiful book!
The History of Love is a book at the centre of this novel which links the various stories across the world and time. Leo Gursky is the first character, an old man, a refugee in New York. Loneliness, lost love and separation from family and coping with ageing. Next is Alma Singer, a 15yr girl whose father is dead and her mother is distant, and a younger brother who is a little bit weird. The final thread is Zvi Litvinoff’s story, a childhood friend of Leo. The title book is the link between these threads and the author skilfully and emotionally draws them all together. The characters are wonderful, I felt connected to them all. A sad story , yet hopeful about love and the connections between people.

4****

“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.”

Leo Gursky escaped the SS in Poland, dreaming of the day he’d go across the Atlantic and find the love of his life, Alma, so they could start their life together. Now he lives alone, afraid no one will notice when he dies. 15-year-old Alma Singer was named for “all the female characters in the book” The History of Love – an obscure volume her father gave her mother. But her father died a few years ago, and her mother has been sad ever since, while her brother seems lost in his obsession that he is the Messiah. What connects these disparate characters is their loneliness, and their search for love.

The novel is also a paean to the written word, in the form of a book – a medium that survives the Holocaust, a transatlantic journey, a flood, plagiarism, fire and international translations to touch men and women, of three different generations, on three continents.

The chapters are narrated in turn by the various characters. I fell in love with Leo Gursky and his chapters are the best, in my opinion. Alma’s chapters are written in a style that is so different that it is jarring, and as a result I felt the plot slowed – too much in my opinion. Still, Krauss can craft a sentence that stays with you; she weaves a rich tapestry, revealing her character’s pain and joy, and arriving at a poignant conclusion that is simply poetic.

This was a good book with its share of hidden gems in the form of beautiful sentences and philosophies on life; however, I wasn't that impressed. Maybe my expectations were to high going into it because I've heard excellent things about this story through various reviewers. I just couldn't seem to connect 100% with the characters and I felt like the story was rather confusing. It shifts in time, place and point of views and sometimes I spent pages figuring out whose point of view a chapter was written from.
I also had a few problems with the way the dialogue was written because it became rather staccato like and hard to read. BUT despite the above-mentioned problems I still think this is a good story that is well thought out by the author. I don't think I've read anything like it before and I appreciate its originality. I'm not sure that I actually agree that this is purely A History of Love - I think it's much more a history of life in general and how people and situations can play tricks on you. But maybe when I've had a few days to think about it I will figure out the true meaning of this story and actually appreciate it more.

Have you ever felt so moved that it's as if you're possessed? Reading The History of Love was like having my chest cracked open, the words flooding into me.

Some passages I loved:

The floorboards creaked under my weight. There were books everywhere. There were pens, and a blue glass vase, an ashtray from the Dolder Grand in Zurich, the rusted arrow of a weather vane, a little brass hourglass, sand dollars on the windowsill, a pair of binoculars, an empty wine bottle that served as a candle holder, wax melted down the neck. I touched this thing and that. At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. 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.

And this: Every year, the memories I have of my father become more faint, unclear, and distant. Once they were vivid and true, then they became like photographs, and now they are more like photographs of photographs. But sometimes, at rare moments, a memory of him will return to me with such suddenness and clarity that all the feeling I've pushed down for years springs out like a jack-in-the-box....

One more line, one that caused the words to swim on the page for me: "The truth is the thing I invented so I could live."

The novel unfolds through several character viewpoints, through different narrative forms - first person accounts, journal entries, excerpts from a novel within the novel itself called The History of Love, even poetry. There is a literary mystery, at the heart of which is a love story that inspires other love stories, so that the novel itself is a history of love.

ive sat with my thoughts for a couple of days before writing this review because im just not quite sure how i feel about the book.

i really enjoyed the concept of the story. i think we can all agree there is power in words, so i found the message and heart of the story quite lovely. i also thought the writing was really appealing at times, as well.

but the more i think about it, the more im convinced the reason i didnt love this is because of the narrative styles. the execution is just a little too unconventional/experimental for me. leos stream of consciousness style narrative didnt really do it for me and almas lists didnt quite feel cohesive enough.

so i like the intentions behind the story, but i just wasnt the biggest fan of how it was told, unfortunately.

↠ 3.5 stars

"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."
Nicole Krauss could have opened her book with this wonderful line, which doesn't come until a few pages later. Instead, she opens with thoughts from the wonderful old Leo Gursky: "When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT. I'm surprised I haven't been buried alive." Right from the beginning as he talks about dying, he is immediately and fully alive. He says "All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen.", so he makes sure that he gets out and gets seen. He makes a public display of spilling his coins and labouring to retrieve them, and of going in to a store to try on shoes and being a bit of a nuisance, even hilariously posing nude for an art class. He started to write again: "At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I’d end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat would be empty."
Krauss's writing is wonderful -- she somehow dives through the surfaces straight into the core of being, and she doesn't waste time. She is just there.
Some of the passages are of such loneliness; she makes them poignant without being mushy. Yet others are brisk and funny: "...things went downhill when I entered adolescence and was abandoned by the pleasant attractiveness that all children have...As soon as the acne cleared my hairline began to recede, as if it wanted to disassociate itself from the embarrassment of my face. My ears, pleased with the new attention they now enjoyed, seemed to strain farther into the spotlight. My eyelids drooped—some muscle tension had to give to support the struggle of the ears."
So the characterisations, the voices, the prose were stellar. The focus, the tracking, of the shifting stories within stories and of parallel lines, wavered and flickered though. It felt a bit forced at times. But maybe with a re-read, and having the benefit on a second time 'round of understanding the structure, it would feel more right.
This is a history of the story of the history of love.

“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.”

I found this quote from a listicle (please don't judge me!) of 50 of the most beautiful sentences in literature. This one particular sentence left me with a heaping serving of "the feels" and so without a second thought, I chucked the book I was reading at that time and started reading "The History of Love."

A few chapters later, I realized that this was not the sappy-romantic book I was hoping for! The story is more heart-breaking, in a way. I'm quite happy to be proven wrong, though. Sad as it may be, the prose could take your breath away. I discovered another work of art, more beautiful than that one sentence that lead me to it.

"The History of Love" is not really much of a history at all. It's more like a meditation on love, or an exploration of love. It's the story of a bunch of people who are not only searching for love, but also searching for themselves, and trying to find their places in the world.

Once the characters' lives intertwine, the ending introduces questions of fate, destiny, and the things that connect us to each other and to the universe. More than that, though, the ending reaffirms the power of love (no, not the sappy 80's song!). It sustains through the years and unites people across decades, miles, and circumstances.

In the end, even though it isn't the romance I was hoping to read, I still came away feeling pretty darn good about love and love stories. How is it that even the people who have suffered the most from having fallen in love still remember it as the most precious thing in the universe? How do the folks who have not yet experienced it know it when they see it? And what in the world would be in the pages of the actual history of love? I don't think one volume would cut it! The book, unfortunately, doesn't give simple answers—but, of course, love is nothing if not complicated.