The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss' novel The History of Love is a wonderful and mysterious story spanning 60 years, two continents (Europe and North America) and more than a few lonely, confused, even disturbed people. It's also a book in a book. Not surprisingly, the book within the book isn't that good, though only excerpts appear.

Krauss' novel, however, is truly a good read. It leaves the reader wanting more, wondering what lies ahead for certain characters even after the last page. The novel is rather confusing, perhaps intentionally so. After all, the various narrators who tell the story are confused about their own lives, their own history. One seeks proof of his own existence. Another is translating a book for a man who does not really exist. One is unaware that he is a published author. A young boy is building an ark for the next great flood. A young girl, Alma, works to solve the mystery of who everyone is -- including the other Alma for whom she is named.

Leopold Gursky, a Polish immigrant and the novel's main character, is a Holocaust survivor, one who hid in the woods, foraging for food, even eating bugs and rats. Alma, the young woman he loved, pregnant with his child, left Europe amid the Nazi threat. That child grew up to be the acclaimed author Gursky had yearned to be.

The Holocaust is long over, and yet Gurksy is still alone in the woods, a lonely man in a New York apartment with a similar solitary friend, very likely an imaginary friend. Gursky drops things in stores and asks odd questions so that people, at least one person, will notice him each day -- so that he will not die having gone unremembered that day, almost to verify his own existence.

I enjoyed the novel but believe it needs read twice. No doubt a second read would highlight details, names that might go unnoticed in the first read. The novel also is replete with literary allusions, which could be better appreciated on a second read.

The novel is, not a study, but a detailed, mysterious look at human loneliness, human desires, human frailties, human hopes, human memories, humanity's connection. A World War II soldier's oversight, a man's plagiarism, a first name repeated, an old man's curiosity and a young girl's persistence interact in ways no single character ever foresaw and together form The History of Love.