The History of Love (2005) (edit title/settings)

• Rated 3 stars

“When I finished this book I almost burst into tears, the good kind. I laughed out loud at least a dozen times while reading it! It is filled with raw human emotion and experience. But – it was really hard to follow. It was done that way on purpose and I am so glad to be done with reading it and move on to other things. I am glad that I read it.
”

• Rated 5 stars

“lovely, lovely book...”

• Rated 4 stars

“"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".”

• Rated 0 stars

“There are puzzles contained between the characters' relationships that aren't fully disclosed until the end of the book. I will take time to read it again to enjoy the craft of Krauss' plot.”

• Rated 3 stars

“I did not find myself being sucked into the characters and their lives. It was more of a surface read for me. ”

• Rated 5 stars

“Beautifully written - absolutely brilliant ”

• Rated 5 stars

““there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love”

• Rated 0 stars

“een mooi boek dat mij erg deed denken aan Everything is illuminated en Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close van Jonathan Saffran Foer.”

• Rated 4 stars

“This was my second attempt of reading something by Krauss and like it. I already read Great House and never could really plunge into the story. It was the same with this book. I took me like forever to get into it.
Alma's mother is sad because after the death of Alma's dad she is lonely. Alma wants to make her happy again and tries to set her up with man. Unexpectedly Alma's mother is asked to translate a book because that is her job. But the History of Love is the book that was the first present of her late husband to her and Alma is named after the main character in this book.
Leo Gursky on the other hand is lonely, too. He is a Polish immigrant and came to America full of hopes to reconnect with his former love who due to second world war left Poland for America. Now he is old and couldn't get together with the woman he loved but has a son he longs to get to know.
Zvi Litvinoff is an author and his best known piece of work is The History of Love. But he has a secret too.
It was hard for me because I didn't like how I couldn't connect the three different story lines at first. I liked reading about Alma the best and felt for Leo. Other than that I couldn't figure it out. Until near the end I suddenly could and right then I happened to like what I read and appreciate Krauss' prose. As soon as it made sense I liked it. Really. I pondered reading from the beginning to see what hints were given early on but somehow I couldn't make me.
I wonder if everybody was clueless like me about the book until near the end...”

• Rated 0 stars

“Wow. This is why we read. Intelligent, beautiful, captivating.”