THE HISTORY OF LOVE

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss, W W Norton & Company, 2005, 252 pp


Finally I have read this book and I loved it. It was like falling into a dream. It is beautifully and wonderfully written. Leo Gursky is an old, old man living in New York City who had escaped from a Polish village in 1939 just as the Germans were coming. His family was killed and he lost track of his one true love, who had emigrated to America. He had also written a novel about this woman whose name was Alma, but the novel was lost as well.

Now there is another Alma, a young girl named after the character in Gursky's book. She has lost her father and her mother is lost in grief for her dead husband. Through Gursky's novel, also titled The History of Love, many people are found again.

It is the way that Krauss unravels the story that touched me so deeply. Also the characters who are vivid and unusual but so real as human beings. A perfect combination of the stories of individual people and the universal experience of people losing each other and their creations because of the evil and violence in the world. Really very impressive. Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer, who are married, are a perfect match as writers. I hope they are happy together and that they both keep on writing.