I enjoyed this book, but it had a lot of loose ends. I don't think the characters were integrated enough. ( )

This book takes several reads... it's not one of those exciting books that you plow through in an evening but it's well worth the effort it takes. If you manage it, you will walk away feeling that people can be truly amazing when no one is looking. Krauss is married to Jonathan Safran Foer who wrote Everything Is Illumniated... the two books have similarities in style and content but Krauss' is worlds more powerful. ( )

Loved it! ( )

I recommended this novel to my book group. It is a fascinating tale of love and loss, wartime, genius, betrayal, and more. It is a fresh interesting that I have not read in other novels. ( )

I didn't know till I read it on here that Nicole Krauss was married to Jonathan Safran Foer, but all the way through this book things reminded me of Everything is Illuminated, the general themes more than anything I suppose. I enjoyed reading it a lot, the descriptions of old age and becoming decrepit were heartbreaking, and you feel like shaking the characters for not grasping onto their opportunities at love. It was a bit confusing when the voice first shifted from Leopold to Alma, and confusing at other points throughout, but in the end I just stopped worrying about it too much and waited for the connections to come clear. The different narrative have very distinct voices, but all of them have a combination of humour, sadness and wisdom that made this a very lovely book to read. ( )

Having had this book recommended to me by several people, I had very high hopes for it. I am pleased to report I was not disappointed. However, this is a book for which you need to keep all your wits about you. The following quote from the book nicely sums up its potential for confusion:

”'The History of Love' starts when Alma is ten, right?” I said. My mother looked up and nodded. “Well how old is she when it ends?” “It’s hard to say. There are so many Almas in the book.” “How old is the oldest?” “Not very. Maybe twenty.” “So the book ends when Alma is only twenty?” “In a way. But it’s more complicated than that. She isn’t even mentioned in some chapters. And the whole sense of time and history in the book is very loose.”

Having realised not far into the novel that it was going to keep me on my toes, I slowed down and tried to digest every word so I didn’t get lost. This may sound like hard work, but the effort was well worth it; by the end I was in floods of tears. The last page is breathtaking in its simplicity, and having come to know the two characters involved, I could do nothing else but cry for them. It has left me in a very melancholy mood, but that is no bad thing.

The writing is beautiful, the characters are sensitively and convincingly drawn, the plot is complex, but the story is both simple and pure, funny and sad. A delight to read. I can’t wait to read it again. ( )

I absolutely adored this book which I did not expect at all. After my disastrous experience with Love Walked In I was really expecting to hate this book. Krauss immediately drew me into the story of the characters and the mystery behind all of their stories. The chapters alternate from being told by three different characters in the book and the difference between each character's storytelling methods really gives the book a 'real' quality to it.

This book is definitely a keeper and will be staying on my shelves... and possibly even forced upon my mother. ( )

Oh my. The History of Love is breathtakingly beautiful. Simple phrases would break my heart with their loveliness and the images that were evokes produced such sighs as I closed my eyes to savor them. Nicole Krauss (who's married to Jonathan Safran Foer) lives in my neighborhood and I'm pretty sure I've seen her around, but I kind of hope I don't run into her again, as I'd be compelled to babble something about her exquisite prose.
Told from a variety of perspectives, The History of Love follows two particular people whose lives are deeply connected to a book with the same name. Leopold Gursky is the man who wrote that book for the girl he loves, naming every woman in the book after her. After surviving Nazi-occupied Poland, he moves to New York and is now an old man, reduced to deliberately causing scenes in public places (spilling things in Starbucks, haggling for change, etc.) so he will be noticed, desperate measures born out of his crippling fear that he will die alone and undiscovered in his apartment. Alma Singer is a fourteen year old girl in present day Brooklyn, whose name came from that book and whose mother is now translating it. Her father died a few years ago and her mother is still cocooned in her grief, whereas her younger brother, Bird, is convinced that he is a lamed vovnik and quite possibly the Messiah.
Rich with the complications of life and the things that can be lost (and rediscovered) with time, Krauss expertly weaves in and out of these stories while still making sure that we are never lost.
I was given this book as a gift for Christmas (2006?) but I never picked it up... now, this could be because the ingenious friend who gave it to me inserted it in a cleverly crafted "book purse"... aka a hardcover book with handles that had a space just large enough for this paperback carved into its pages. But when I remembered its existence inside, I read this in the space of two days. I don't know if I simply needed a lovely book and so that's why my reaction is so intense, but I clearly adored it. I devoured it, trying to slow down to savor everything, but alas. It's the first book in a long time that made me reach for a pen to underline phrases and mark passages for later reference. All I can say is that if you're a friend of mine who usually gets a birthday or Christmas present and you haven't read this... well... there will be no surprise in what you'll be getting this year. ( )

This novel is sad, but sweet. You will laugh, but also feel a little heartbroken for the characters. The characters are easy to love, especially Leo and Bird. This book is very smart, and the connection between the characters is revealed very slowly. Highly recommeneded. ( )

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. ( )

Feels like a Jonathan-Safran-Foer ripoff.
Then again, she is his wife. ( )

Good read but i will not remember this book for long. ( )

Nicole Krauss’s novel, The History of Love, moves back and forth between Leo and Alma and a few other supporting characters. The story jumps backward and forward in time; different characters share the narration, and there are excerpts from books the various characters are reading and writing. For the most part, Krauss juggles everything remarkably well. She gives each speaker an individual voice, and I never found it hard to figure out who was narrating at any particular point.

Leo, the retired locksmith whose story opens the book, got my attention right away. There’s something about stories of old people living alone that get to me. Maybe they play into my own fears. Leo’s greatest fear is not to be seen, to die on a day when no one saw him. He makes a point of getting himself noticed by dropping change or trying on outlandish shoes, even modeling for a life drawing class. Anything to be seen. I liked Leo from the very beginning.

Alma, the 14-year-old girl whose story occupies much of the remaining narrative, took longer for me to warm up to. Her sections are made up of numbered paragraphs that are usually quite short and follow her own idiosyncratic logic. I couldn’t help but feel that these bits were derivative of Jonathan Safron Foer’s Extremely Loud and Dangerously Close, and I found Foer’s young narrator to be just a little more endearing and Foer’s narrative style to be just a little more clever and engaging. (I did not know until after I finished this book that Krauss is married to Foer and that the two novels were published at the same time.) Alma did eventually grow on me, and by the mid-point of the book I was as interested in her as I was in Leo.

Krauss does a great job of keeping the various narrative threads under control and making sure they all come together in the end. That’s not to say that this book has a neat and tidy ending—it doesn’t—but the questions that are raised get answered, and most of the character’s quirks and odd plot twists lead to some sort of payoff. Most of the revelations are not complete surprises, but it’s also never completely obvious what’s going to happen. To me, that’s the sign of good story construction.

My only real complaint with this book is that the book-within-the-book, which drives much of the story, is exactly the kind of book I don’t like to read. Every time there was a excerpt, I tuned out. Fortunately (for me), you don’t actually have to understand what happens in the book-within-the-book to follow and enjoy the rest of the story. But unfortunately, it was hard to fully buy in to a story in which people were so profoundly affected by writing that I disliked. The disconnect created an emotional gap between me and the characters that couldn’t quite be breached. Better, I think, to leave the profoundly moving narrative to the reader’s imagination. As it is, it disappoints and ends up weakening the overall impact of an otherwise excellent novel.

See my complete review at my blog. ( )

Oh god. This is the best book I have read in a long, long time. It's just perfect. There is a book within a book and a great old man character who is just so sad and lonely and loveable. Amazing. ( )

"The History of Love" is the story of a lonely girl, and a lonely old man, who is an author and holocaust survivor. As the story of the novel "A History of Love" unfolds, their paths cross.

Achingly beautiful, just convoluted enough to keep its secrets until the climax, and keeping firm to that heart-wrenching line of hilarious and sad that the best holocaust authors walk, this is a novel to be reckoned with. ( )

really good. really really good. for people who like words. ( )

This incredible book grabbed me even before I finished the first sentence. The character of Leo Gursky is unforgettable, and Krauss' writing is just beautiful. I didn't want this book to end. ( )

Leo Gursky fell in love with Alma when he was 10 yrs old, living in Poland. When they were 16-ish, Alma left for America, much to Leo’s heartbreak, and so he wrote a book about her, called The History of Love. He entrusted to a friend, as he was forced to leave his village to avoid persecution, and eventually made it to America, found Alma and discovers that she has married, as when she left Leo, she had been pregnant. Alma, a precocious 14-yr-old, was named after Alma, in The History of Love, which, unknown to Leo, made its way to publication, only under a different man’s name. These two characters end up finding each other – it’s very sweet and the writing is beautiful… ( )

had great reviews but I couldn't stay with it. Leo Gursky is trying to live a bit longer, daydreams of his lost love 60 yrs. ago in Poland, writes a book, it changes a few lives, 14 yr old Alma singer tries to find a love for her mother and meets Leo gursky. Its then he learns his book was worthwhile

The History of Love just might be one of my favorite books of all times. I have not read it for quite some time but when I did read it I wrote down many of my favorite versus, phrases, and sayings. The way that Nicole Krauss writes is simply astounding. No one has ever quite worded things in such a way. I’m not going to give a review on the book just now because it is not fresh in my memory. However, I will give my favorite quote from the book.

“Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist. There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact.” ( )

This was a fascinating and quick read. Nicole Krauss did an excellent job switching between the two main characters, an elderly man and 14 year old girl. Alma singer decides to do some detective work and find out more about a novel that brought her parents together. Leo Gursky decided that his school time sweetheart would be the love of his life forever, even though time had torn them apart. These two different characters are looking for the same thing but don't even know it. ( )