“I want to say somewhere: I've tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in. I scowled at the world. And the world scowled back...And to be honest: I wasn't really angry. Not anymore. I had left my anger somewhere long ago. Put it down on a park bench and walked away. And yet. It had been so long. I didn't know any other way of being.”― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
“I scowled at the world. And the world scowled back. We were locked in a stare of mutual disgust.”― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
Sometimes I imagine my own autopsy. Disappointment in myself: right kidney. Disappointment of others in me: left kidney. Personal failures: kishkes. I don’t mean to make it sound like I’ve made a science of it…The pain of forgetting: spine. The pain of remembering: spine. All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist: my knees, it takes half a tube of Ben-Gay and a big production just to bend them. Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.”
By Nicole Krauss― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
Its been nearly a week since I read this book--no, maybe more than a week. Maybe less. I can't very much remember, but what I do remember is how moved I was by this little novel, and the way I was crying by the time it ended. I don't think very highly of the practice of recommending something by saying "it was so moving I cried" (with the implication that thus you should experience it too) since it seems like a rather shameful shortcut. But my intent in saying this book brought me to tears was that it doesn't matter how long ago I have read this book or how poorly I summarize what its basic contents are--the bottom line is that it was a book that has the power to move, which is to say, it is already a successful book in my estimation.
Let me begin by telling you that it will remind you of a novel you have read as a child. For a while I pondered about this strong feeling of deja vu. How could I have read something like this as a child, since it was only published in 2006? And it's not like I knew the ending--but did I? Something in me knew the characters with an indelible completeness--the tall, lanky, ungainly Alma (one of the several protagonists) whose widowed mother she is trying to make happy again, a mother who is translating a mysterious manuscript titled The History of Love for a large sum paid by an anonymous man, the book from which she is named "Alma" as the heroine in the book was named "Alma"-- or her young religious brother, nicknamed Bird who believes he is one of the 36 chosen ones and his flights of bravado and sincere nature as he tries to replace the gap the loss of his father created in his life.
And Leo...Leo Gursky, a rather typical "smelly old man" who a reader perhaps makes a move to pity, only to finish the book and realize how much strength the man had and what a hero he is. And that he wrote the original manuscript, The History of Love a long long time ago, for his childhood love, Alma. Does this sound like a fairy tale? And again to the question: why did I remember this book as something I had read as a child? It was only now beginning this review that I could come at a guess. I think it is because this book is at its heart a lovely and convoluted mystery which the characters construct in order to provide companionship for their loneliness--loneliness before the word picks up all the negative connotations it has today. The loneliness of playing alone as a child and wanting to connect with this large and bizarre world in a very immediate and overwhelming way. This sentiment precedes any literature we read as children or cartoons we saw--it's a remnant of our questionings, a memory from days where things were mysterious puzzles that were worth being solved.
The premise of the novel is both simple and complex. A boy loves a girl. He writes stories for her and loves her. War arrives, she is sent away, and only years later he can find her. Only then its too late and she is married to another man. Then the boy finds out the girl actually gave birth to his son, but he can never say a word to the son. The son grows up to be a famous writer. The man grows increasingly lonely and old. But what of his love of the girl? Does it survive? Will he ever feel that same love again? Will he ever be truly happy before he dies?
But that's only one story. There are a few more tangled into one another, each crucial to the final climax of the story. There are books within books, mostly prominently the few chapters of the book Leo Gursky wrote for Alma, the book named The History of Love. The chapters we are exposed to from his book are beautiful and whimsical. A chapter about the first gestures ever made. A chapter about silence. A chapter about strings. A chapter about a man who loves a girl but is made of glass and is afraid if she touches him he will shatter. Chapters from other books, books written by Leo's son. Books about angels and their fears and sadnesses.
In short, a splendid and multifaceted story, a whole world of whimsy and heart. Characters who are so lovable not because of their quirks, but because of how unabashedly desperate they are. No irony, no collapse into farce. It is rare to find so much heart in a story, complete with a wild scavenger hunt, with coincidences, and the hand of fate. I highly recommend.
92/100
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