I’m not so sure “The History of Love” is about love as much as it is loss…or maybe searching for loves that have been lost. It’s a sad but beautiful book about people trying to regain and understand the most important relationships of their lives.

During most of the book, I felt lost myself. I knew the plot lines and characters would somehow come together…but always felt like I was about 2 steps behind the author. Which was OK, and in some books it’s not – I just want to throw the book down in frustration. But in this, sometimes a feeling is expressed so well, that I found myself nodding in agreement.

“Yesterday I saw a man kicking a dog and I felt it behind my eyes. I don’t know what to call this, a place before tears. The pain of forgetting: spine. The pain of remembering: spine.”

Krauss takes on a major challenge in her characters…she voices a World War II survivor, a fifteen-year old girl, a twelve-year old boy and a few others…and makes them authentic. Their voices are very clear and very convincing.

From Leo, the old man: “If we do talk, we never speak in Yiddish. 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.”

He’s experienced such grief, such horrors in his life that he was never able to fully live it.

“After she left, everything fell apart. No Jew was safe. There was rumors of unfathomable things, and because we couldn’t fathom them we failed to believe them, until we had no choice and it was too late.”

He remains trapped in the past, searching for that which he lost, and creating the answers that he can, either through words or imagination.

While I believe Leo is truly the main character of the book, for it is about him that the major revelations are made – I was drawn more to Alma, the girl who is searching for answers about her life after the death of her father. Where Leo has had many years to search and reflect and live, she is still trying to find a way in the world, some idea of how to become her own person.

Her voice is at times so childlike and bewildered…but there is an underlying strength that leads one to believe that given time, she will get where she needs to go.

“It wasn’t that far, so I decided to walk, and while I did, I imagined rooms all over the city that housed archives no one had ever heard of, like last words, white lies, and false descendants of Catherine the Great.”

There are not many answers to be found in “The History of Love”…but the questions that are asked and the way they are phrased should be familiar to us all. Is the end of a search finding the answers or the way that we change while we are searching? Will we ever truly find that which we seek or will we become someone whose life is defined by our journey?

“And then I realized that I’d been searching for the wrong person. I looked into the eyes of the oldest man in the world for a boy who fell in love when he was ten.”

Or is the search for love the one journey that defines us all? ( )

I've been meaning to read this one forever due to some glowing reviews, but had a hard time getting a hold of a copy for ages! But bookmooch finally came through for me. I read this in 48 hours. And then immediately skimmed it again to catch everything I might have missed before all the pieces came together. I really liked the author's writing style. Her voice is simple, direct, unpretentious. The story itself was beautiful, and surprisingly complex given the short length of the book. I'd highly recommend this one. ( )

People love it.... but I guess I just don't get it. I found reading the book a chore, and the main characters too scattered and not full enough. ( )

I loved the beginning of this book and how Leo tries 'to make a point of being seen' because 'All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen.' which is a beautiful observation. Sadly, for me, the rest of the book did not quite follow on from this as I found the characters, especially Alma and her family, quite hard to warm to which may be due to Alma's narrative being broken down into points. I also found that at the end the story didn't quite hold together for me - this is something that is always important to me when reading a book and there are inconsistencies here that sadly just don't feel true. Nevertheless this was an interesting read. ( )

Read in my book group- very well written. Interesting how the author wove two stories together. ( )