The first book I have finished this year is History of Love by Nicole Krauss.
Without giving too much of the story away, the book centers around two main characters. A Polish Jew named Leopold who escaped from the grasp of the Nazis in WWII. Before the war Leo was a young man who wrote a book called the History of Love about his great love for his childhood sweetheart, Alma.
The second main story line centers around Alma, although not Leopold's Alma. The Alma from Krauss' novel is a young girl named after the main character from her parents' favorite book, the History of Love. Alma is struggling to come to terms with the death of her father and the emotional absence of her mother.
I typically like books that have a few surprises, choices that characters make that catch you off guard, or plot twists that you would have never seen coming. And this book did surprise me a few times.
I must admit that I didn't initially love this book. If I had not been reading it for a book club I might have been tempted to put it down and abandon it for another book. About halfway through the book I felt like I was finally connecting with the characters. By the end of the book I was really glad that I hadn't fled to other pursuits and left History of Love alone on the shelf.
Usually I love books for their characters. My initial judgment of the character development in this novel was that it was lacking. I felt like Leo lacked a certain depth and Alma wasn't necessarily easy to read. By the last page though I was convinced that Krauss has written Leopold as a shell of a man because he was simply existing. All the things that make us human, that really anchor us to this world Leo had lost decades before and he was only a pale reflection of a person. The death of his humanity and the death of his body were not simultaneous events.
I think that Alma could have still used a little work but I also think that she was confusing for the reader because she lacked self awareness. She couldn't explain who she was or why she was acting in a certain way because her motivations weren't clear to her. What looked like attempts to imitate and idolize her father, and to fix her mother were really attempts to find someone who would love her, and more importantly, notice her.
Hands down though, the thing I loved most about his book was the language. The prose in this book was absolutely beautiful. Let's just say there are quite a few highlighted passages. In the beginning of the book I wasn't sure if the author was being pretentious or if she could actually pull off such great use of prose and still weave it into a believable and moving story. I think in the end she accomplished what she sat out to do.
Read it and let me know what you think...
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