the history of love.

I was curious about this book was because not only did it get good reviews but its author, Nicole Krauss, is married to Jonathan Safran Foer who wrote Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Ironically, I couldn't help but think of Safron Foer the entire time I was reading The History of Love. The storylines are completely different and yet they have the same feel and many similar characteristics. Both stories have more than one point-of-view - one of whom is a young child who sets out on a personal mission in New York City and one of whom is an older man who is dealing with the major loss of a son. The similarities go beyond that but the most notable one is the feel of the book: unique melancholy splashed with humor and wit.

Polish immigrant Leo Gursky is a lonely, old man who expects death around every corner. In Poland, he was madly in love with a young woman named Alma and eventually followed her to America after surviving the war. Once there, he realizes Alma has not only married another man and had two sons, but that her first son, Isaac, is actually his own. He spends the rest of his life watching Isaac from afar and keeping tabs on him through newspapers and magazines as Isaac grows up to be a famous author.

In the years that Alma and Leo were together in Poland, Leo wrote her three books, the third of which was called The History of Love.

Fast forward to the present day and fourteen-year-old Alma, named after a character in her parents' favorite book, The History of Love,  is struggling to find stability - her father died a few years before from cancer, her mother is suffering from loneliness and depression, and her little brother, nicknamed Bird for attempting to fly off the roof of a two-story building, is convinced he is one of God's chosen people and spends hours of his time building an ark out of trash and debris in an empty parking lot.

Alma's mother, who is a book translator, gets a letter in the mail from an unknown man named Jacob Marcus, requesting that she translate The History of Love from Spanish to English for an insane amount of money. Alma realizes that The History of Love may reveal to her some secrets that she does not know about her parents or about the woman whom she was named after. Consequently, she steals her mothers translations as they are produced in order to read them and try to uncover the information she desires. Simultaneously, she sets out in the city on a quest to find one piece of information after another - Is the Alma Mereminski character from the book real? Who was she? Was the author of the book a secret lover from her mother's past?

The story has many layers and I spent most of the book trying to figure out the connection between the two protagonists and what it all meant. The story does end up tying together in a satisfying way with Bird being the eventual individual who makes it all work out.

My favorite part about Krauss' writing is her convincing character voices: as mature but naive Alma, as experienced but loose-screwed Leo, and, toward the end of the book, as psychologically messy Bird. These characters are so different in age, in experience, in personality, in wants and needs, in social interactions, and more. Although the book has a heavily somber tone, it simultaneously feels fun and light thanks to Krauss' plugs of humor. Leo's narrative voice is deeply profound as he reflects on his life and on the many things he regrets. Yet, in action, he is crazed and erratic, posing nude for art classes out of fear of not being seen by anyone each day. Alma is strong in her solitude but still has typical teenager thoughts: her mom annoys her, she worries about not having friends, and she is in love with her Russian pen pal who has moved to Brooklyn but doesn't know how to allow him into her life.

This book is a great one, but must be read slowly in order to hang onto to the myriad of details and story lines and to be aware of when the pieces finally entwine.