“The History of Love,” by Nicole Krauss, was nothing like I thought it would be. Even after reading the back cover (which I always do) I still had different expectations.
“The History of Love,” however, did not disappoint.
The story is told from four perspectives: Leo Gursky, an old man who emigrated from Poland in his 20s; Alma, a teenage girl looking for someone to make her mother’s loneliness go away; Zvi Litvinoff, author of ‘The History of Love’ in Krauss’ novel; and later from Alma’s younger brother Bird.
Krauss dabbles in nonfiction in her purely fiction work, and by the end of the novel, Krauss has one wondering what is true and what is not, although as Leo himself questions in the novel “What is truth?”
“The History of Love” begins with Leo, an old man who emigrated to New York from Poland in his 20-somethings, after World War II ended. He had been living in the woods trying to avoid the Nazis, and the love of his life had emigrated just before the war started. He had been saving up his money to follow her when the war began. The idea of joining her was the only thing that kept him alive. When he finally makes it to New York, he finds her only to discover that she, believing him to be dead, has married someone else. He also discovers that they have a son, Isaac, with whom he never makes contact.
At first it seems that we will just follow Leo along until his death, but it is soon revealed that he has written a book about her, (we later find out her name is Alma) and he left it in the safekeeping of his friend Zvi, but it was destroyed in a flood at Zvi’s home.
Then we meet Alma, a fourteen-year-old living with her brother and heartbroken mother. Alma’s father died when she was six, and her mother has been in mourning ever since. Alma wants her mother to stop being lonely, and so when a stranger contacts her mother to translate “The History of Love” for him, Alma, convinced that because she was named after the Alma in the novel and of the book’s importance to her mother, is determined to meet him so he can be the solution to her mother’s loneliness.
Along the way, Krauss tears down almost every thing she has told thus far in the novel, leaving nothing unbroken. We learn that everything told to us has been a lie in one form or another, even Leo’s love for Alma.
In a way, Krauss’ “History of Love” has been a history of love, though not the one I was expecting, because it shows the tangled webs we weave, and how our lives are more connected to the lives of strangers than we previously thought.
For me, the novel ended abruptly, and I had many questions left unanswered. This is surely worth a second read, although I’m not sure much more will be understood the second time around, partly because it is difficult to untangle lies from truth. And honestly, some lies aren’t meant to be untangled because they are someone else’s truth–best to let them be.