Legit Lit: The History of Love

I could describe this novel to you in ways that make it sound like an anthology of the same, tired old cliches. I could tell you that the lives of the two narrators seem unconnected, and you would know that they were destined to meet. I could further tell you that one of them, an old man, is trying to escape a troubled past, and that the other, a fourteen-year-old girl, seems in every way his opposite except that her past is troubled, too. I could tell you that both feel very alone in the world. You'd be yawning at this point, predicting that they're destined to fill the holes in each other's lives. All of that is true (sort of), but so is all of this: First, the author, Nicole Krauss, is married to legendary, wonderful, awe-inspiring Jonathan Safran Foer. How cool is that? Further, Leo Gursky, the old man, is one of the best characters I've read in a long time. His poignancy is matched only by his good humor. His unromanticized observations about the world around him and his own aging process are sharp, true, and often humorous. Alma, the girl, is an equally fascinating case. She wrestles compellingly with the typical questions that plague teenage girls - many of which have to do with her appearance and her relationships with boys - and more unusual issues such as how to move on after the death of your father, especially if your mother can't, how to persuade your brother to be a normal kid and shake this conviction that he is one of 36 people on Earth chosen specially by God, and how to survive in the Arctic/desert/rain forest/ocean should you happen to find yourself there. The plot thickens.

And it gets better: Leo wrote a manuscript as a tribute to his childhood love when he was a young man in Poland, passed it on to a friend with whom he lost touch, then hid in the woods when the Nazis invaded his village and killed everyone they could find. He was the sole survivor. After the war he left for America, searching for his sweetheart, also named Alma, after whom he named every female character in his manuscript, The History of Love. Unbeknownst to Leo, someone had published his manuscript after all, and teenaged Alma is named after Leo's long-lost Alma from the Polish village so many years ago; her father discovered the book in a used bookstore and loved it so much he named his daughter for its heroine. Yeah, it's pretty complicated.

I spent the majority of this book trying to predict how the worlds of these characters would collide. Obviously there were lots of connections, but it is a tribute to Nicole Krauss's mastery that I couldn't figure it out until just about the moment it actually happened. This book is filled with twists and turns and mystery, and there are still a few unanswered questions in my mind which I enjoy mulling over even now that I've finished reading it. This is a sad, lovely book, and I'm not the only one who thinks so; it is a New York Times Bestseller, winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, winner of the Borders Original Voices Award, finalist for the Orange Prize, #1 Booksense Pick, winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and winner of France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Ėtranger Award. Never mind that you've never heard of most of those. This book is resting on so many laurels you have to stand on tip toes to reach it. Read it and fall in love.