*sigh* This book…

I decided I wanted to read Nicole Krauss’ novel after finding this quote from it somewhere…

“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”

I know, right?? I thought that if that quote was anything to go by, I’d love the rest of the book, and I was right. It is beautifully written with several interweaving stories, which I always love in a book. The whole story revolves around a book called The History of Love, but don’t worry, it’s not as mind-bending as that sounds!

The novel has been translated into more than 25 languages and received rave reviews when it was released in 2005. Here are a few examples, which can be found in the first pages of the book:

“For all the complexity of this book, it has the simplicity of pure emotion, and is a delight because of it.”- The Times

“A tremendous novel that will wring out our tired hearts.”- Colm McCann

“A witty, emotional and ambitiously literary work… populated with sharp, deeply sympathetic characters.”- Rolling Stone

The novel has two main protagonists, the teenager Alma Singer (who was named after every girl in The History of Love) and Leo Gursky, an old immigrant, both of whom live in New York. Leo is lovable, funny and endearing, while still being quite crass! He is aware he’s reaching death so, estranged from his family, he reaches out to his son. Alma is intelligent, a loner and a romantic, longing for her mother to find someone since the death of her husband, Alma’s father. When a man writes and asks Alma’s mother to translate The History of Love from Spanish, Alma seeks to find him, hoping he could be the one for her mother. It is a story of lost love, familial love, friendship love and young love. But at no point is it sappy or sentimental.

There were a few points where I got a bit lost and distracted and a few times I had to flip back to see connections. But this was just due to the lyrical nature of the book, which is what makes it so beautiful.

It’s definitely going to become a favourite of mine; the minute I finished it, I wanted to go back to the beginning and read it again. However, to think that I could encourage one of you to read it for the first time is very exciting! So do please read it so I can chat about it with you, especially if you appreciate well-written literature and it’s been a while since you’ve read a “good” book.