A little ways into The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, it occurred to me that the book had a lot in common with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I read Foer’s book with my book group, but I wasn’t that fond of it. Krauss seems to be doing what Foer was trying to do–but actually pulling it off.
The History of Love has multiple points of view and books within books. I enjoyed all of the voices and found them touching. Ultimately, this book is about two people. Leo escaped WWII only to find his love married to another and the book he was writing lost. We meet him decades later, as he struggles to feel seen in a world where he’s been erased as a man, father, and writer.
Alma is a young girl trying to find her widowed mother a new love interest, to shake her mother out of depression. She must also contend with a younger brother who consols himself in religious devotion (to the point of building an ark) and a foreign born male friend who wants to be a boyfriend.
Are the lives of our two heroes going to touch? Of course. Will all secrets be revealed? Not exactly. And even those that are will be more clear to you than to the characters. While there are amazing coincidences in this book, the realistic streak comes from several characters dying before they find out secrets or before cathartic confrontations.
Speaking of coincidences, Krauss and Foer are married, but they didn’t meet until they had written the books about writing and love that I find so similar.
I highly recommend this.
