عصر امروز که هوا طوفانی شد و چندین درخت هم در خیابان های این شهر شکستند ، من کتاب تاریخ عشق را بالاخره خواندم

One of the last books I read in 2017 was Virginia Woolf's A Room of One Own. In this series of essays, Woolf maintains that if a woman has a room of her own in which to write, then she is more than capable of producing the same if not greater works than men. While pondering my 2018 classics bingo and what book to use as a free square, my thoughts turned to Nicole Krauss. I finally discovered Krauss last year, having read both Great House and Forest Dark. The prose in both novels was superb, leading literary critics to dub Krauss as one of the greatest Jewish writers since Kafka. Krauss has a desk of her own in which to write, discussing it at length in Great House. I decided it would be appropriate to use my bingo free square for her History of Love, another of her novels that weaves together multiple plot lines in Kafka like fashion.

Leopold Gursky is approaching the age of his death. As he nears his final hour, he can not help but reminisce about his childhood home in Slonim near Minsk and his boyhood friends Bruno Schulz- real life author of Streets of Crocodiles- and Zvi Litvinoff. All three men decided upon careers in writing in their youth before the Nazis invaded Poland and shattered their dreams. Before Jewish life in Slonim ended, young Leopold Gursky fell in love with Alma Mereminski. With a name meaning soul and a body strikingly beautiful, Gursky decided at age ten that Mereminski would be the one true love of his life, even carving their initials into a special tree. The young lovebirds knew that their love was something special; however, the Nazis posed an even greater threat, and the Mereminski family fled to New York in 1941, not before Alma became pregnant with Leo's child; something neither was aware of.

Hiding in the forest for the duration of the war, Leo reached New York years later and learned about his son's existence. Named Isaac after a great Jewish Russian writer, the boy would go on to become a prolific writer in his own right yet pain Leo for the rest of his life. Prior to going into hiding, Leo had written a manuscript that was close to his heart entitled The History of Love. He entrusted Zvi Litvinoff with this book for safekeeping, knowing that Litvinoff was fortunate enough to be leaving for the safety of Chile. Little did Gursky know that years later Litvinoff would change the language from Yiddish to Spanish and pass off this eloquent book as his own.

Years later, fourteen year old Alma Singer, named for the protagonist in History of Love, stumbles across a letter from one Jacob Marcus who is asking Alma's mother Charlotte to translate the book from Spanish to English. The Singer family has been grieving over the death of their husband/father Daniel for the last seven years, and Alma believes that translating this book would make her mother happy again. As she discovers discarded translations in the trash, Alma undergoes a personal quest to discover who her namesake was and why this protagonist named Alma profoundly moved her father to gift his copy of The History of Love to her mother. In this process of self discovery, Alma unearths many answers as well as questions about both her father, her namesake, and their past.

In true Krauss fashion, she weaves together these three plot lines without either protagonist knowing of each other's existence. Gursky lives inside his memories hoping for one chance meeting with his son, who has know idea who his real father is. Alma is also searching for Alma Mereminski or someone who can provide clues as to who she was. Encouraged by her uncle to stop constantly grieving for her father, she is urged to step outside of her comfort zone of writing and books. As she matures, Alma learns clues about the History of Love, her father, and herself. Meanwhile, Krauss intersperses the sections about Gursky and Singer with the story of Litvinoff's life in Chile and how History of Love came to be. All three stories are moving and eventually come to a nexus toward the novel's denouement.

As with Nicole Krauss' two other novels that I have read, in History of Love I experienced mature literary fiction which had a profound impact on me. I think I was moved the most by this novel because I have a daughter named Alma and I was touched by the protagonist Alma's capacity to love amidst her grieving. This added personal twist seems to be a page out of Krauss' mature style of writing that I have come to love and look forward to. She has certainly done well given a room of her own in which to write, and has become a leading contemporary literary fiction author. Having caught up with her novels, I happily anticipate the day she publishes her next novel, whenever that may be.

5 stars

The one word I would use for this book is poetic . Every word is like poetry.
Poetry with a punch.
Ernest Hemingway said, "There is nothing to writing. All you have to do is sit at a typewriter and bleed." I found a lot of blood dripping from its pages. It hurts like hell. It hurts like only a true story can, yet this is fiction, so it makes you wonder.
It made me think about all the people I pass on the street. It reminded me that they all have their personal histories and ghosts in their closets that have made them into the people they are. Their personal history or histories taught them love and loss or the abandonment of both, and perhaps they've never communicated any of these feelings or experiences that have made them who they are. Perhaps if they would have, it would have created a new history, a new story, but maybe they've decided not to utter a sound because they desire to live in one story, the only story they want for themselves. Maybe they do not tell people who they are because it is better for everyone if they are invisible, or so they think, but maybe it's true, who knows? Or what if they decide to tell their story but only on paper and unintentionally their secret via their written words influences the history of others and thus continues forever as only a work out of love can?
Something to think about,
Something to love,
and it's all contained in this lovely novel.