“The History of Love” is an ambitious title. It promises to be all-encompassing, thoughtful, wise, charming, inquisitive, comforting and not to be trite, insignificant, dishonest or insincere. Nicole Krauss’s novel of this name is at once all and none of that.
“The History of Love” catches up with Leopold Gursky at the end of his life when he is an undeniably lonely old man who lost the only woman he ever loved half a century ago. After being separated in the war, the woman gave birth to Leo’s son, unbeknownst to him, and married another man, believing Leo to be dead. When Leo finally located her in America, she had already begun a life without him — one that did not have a spot saved for him as her lover or his son’s father. Thus, Leo begins his life alone in the city, working as a locksmith and keeping careful track of the son who doesn’t know of his existence.
Leo, however, is not the only narrator of this story. Though the novel moves throughout the other characters’ lives rather disjointedly and without much explanation, it eventually becomes clear that each one is interconnected, though some relationships still remain hazy.
One of these intersecting plot lines is narrated by Alma Singer, a 14-year-old girl whose mother and brother cannot get over the loss of their husband/father and, as a family, have more than enough quirks to go around.
The other main plotline centers around Zvi Litvinoff, who publishes Leo’s novel “The History of Love” (herein enters Krauss’s novel’s namesake) without Leo knowing, as Zvi is also under the impression that Leo has died. To Leo’s knowledge, the book was lost years ago and never published. However, though it was not widely circulated, its publication did have a profound effect on each of the other storylines in Krauss’s novel.
Throughout each storyline is a pervasive feeling of sadness and dislocation. Alma (named for every female character in Leo’s “The History of Love”) and her brother Bird are precocious to a fault, presumably both by nature and as a result of their unusual upbringing. The loss of their father has created in each a desire to hold on to his memory and each other in any way possible, and yet also distance themselves from their mother’s suffocating longing for the past.
Meanwhile, Leo, a cantankerous old man who had the best and worst years of his life in rapid succession long ago, has lived his many years since, in New York, as an afterthought to his lost love. He struggles daily between an effort to be seen and allowing himself to see what he wants. So much so, in fact, that it is impossible for the reader to ever be certain if any of what he sees is actually there.
Alma’s endeavor to reconcile the classic pains and triumphs of growing up with her almost desperate desire to help her mother out of her crippling loneliness is heart-rending in its willful earnestness. When her mother is commissioned to translate “The History of Love,” it is Alma’s search for the author of the novel that eventually leads her to Leo.
There is not a single character in the book who could be considered happy, and yet, none of them can be purely classified as unhappy, either. While this is an undeniable testament to human nature, Krauss’s decision to disallow the fulfillment of anyone’s deepest desires, at least within the pages of the book, gives the whole novel a disappointed and plaintive feeling.
That being said, there is beauty in the poignancy and heartbreaks of the novel, and there is also hope. If not for Leo or his son, then at least for Alma and her family, whose ties to Leo through his book ensure that he has not disappeared.
Krauss’s “The History of Love” is written with intense feeling and flashes of humor that create a unique and eclectic cast of characters. The novel’s organization and conclusion feels unnecessarily abstract at points, yet the interwoven structure of the storylines is an imperative part of the novel’s grace. Krauss defies limitations as she jumps between and interlaces each storyline to give just a small sampling of what the history of love entails.