The History of Love

I read the book originally in college as part of a Jewish Literature course, and I was struck by the love story inside. The title drew me in immediately, and it was one of those beautifully heartbreaking stories with lines that will stick with you for a lifetime.

“Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.” I will never be over this one.

This book was a present from a friend and I dove into it with no information about the novel or the author.

Many histories come together in it in an unhurried pace, present dots, and let the characters join them. The various perspectives weave and interweave stories and the warps and wefts bring them closer and closer into forming a bigger whole – only to see the knitting is too late by very little.

There are unrecognised talents and relationships, and accidents and serendipity direct the needles. And when the revelation comes, it is to a person bent heavy under… show more.

This book has it all: love, mystery, obsession, and a wonderfully fractured structure that fits right in with how we piece together personal histories.

And I love the young protagonist, Alma Singer, who solves the mystery of lost love because the adults have given up. Most of all, I love this book for its ending, which gives a satisfying and hopeful conclusion to the human condition.

Nicole Krauss creates a story that both speaks to and around the Holocaust while never really speaking about the Holocaust.

Instead focusing on the atrocities of the World War II, the novel talks about connection, misconnection, and the power of story. We get memorable characters like Bird, a boy whose nickname means more than his actual name because of how often he tries to fly, and Bruno, named for the Jewish writer and artist Bruno Schultz.

We look at age, how people can feel invisible young and old, but also how we can sink into grief without noticing, embodied by… show more.

The shadow of the Holocaust leans over this story, which moves between noughties New York and Poland sixty years earlier. Octogenarian Leo Gursky, now living in Manhattan, once wrote a book, The History of Love, inspired by his love for a girl in his village in Poland. Alma Singer is a 14-year-old girl living on the other side of the city, and the mystery of what happened to his novel brings them together. 

Every time I open The History of Love—and I return to it again and again—I find myself suspended between tears and laughter reading this gorgeous, emotionally-charged story. It is full of heartbreak and humor about an old man, Leo Gursky and a teenage girl, Alma—and the history, longing, and loneliness that brings them together, and connects all of us.