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#35 The History of Love by Nicole Krauss Review
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| Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother’s loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author.
Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the love lost that sixty years ago in Poland inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn’t know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives. . . |
As much as I desperately wanted to give this book a great review, I know it’s going to end up mixed and I apologise for that to anyone who adored this book because I know they are out there from the other reviews I’ve read.
On the surface this book was beautifully written, almost poetically. It was divided up into different narrators or parts and unlike some books i’ve read, this was easy to follow. It was well written throughout and it really did touch me. There was a part I even had a little cry which usually is the making of a good book but at the end of it, there was just something missing…
I felt although it had a sweet ending, it just didn’t tie everything up as I would of liked. There were different off stories that just seemed to fall away and we didn’t know what happened with them, like with Alma’s younger brother Bird. We also never knew who the man was that asked her mother to translate the book. Maybe some people wouldn’t care since they weren’t the main story but in my opinion all ends need to be tied up (unless it’s a series of course). Because of this, after I finished the book and put it back onto my shelf I just felt a sense that it wasn’t finished and it didn’t feel good. Again this could of just been me. Maybe because I really enjoyed the smaller stories that added to the main one, I was especially disappointed not to have found out what happened with Misha.
The characters were my favourite part of the book, especially Alma. I could really believe her naivety and need to know. In fact, despite knowing very little about Jewish customs I found the characters to be very believable. I think this added to the need to know more after the book finished, I was just so invested in the characters that the end just didn’t do them justice.
I’ll stop there, I don’t want to give too much away nor do I want to put anyone off reading this because it was still good, I just felt it could of been better.
My favourite quote from the book was
“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.”
But there were so many others I could of picked, this one just happened to be my favourite, the beauty and romance of this line summed up my other feelings about the book, it was written in such a lovely way that I did enjoy reading it, just not the ending.
Now reading… The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
4 Comments
Holly Busyxbees
this sounds really good by the little description !
im really wanting to see a review on ” the curious incident…” i started reading it, got a few pages in then had to stop. The way it is written made my head hurt !
Amy Marie
I really didn’t want to put too many people off because it was a really lovely read I just felt the ending really lacked something! When I read the last page I was like “umm where is the rest?”
I can totally see why your head hurt! It hurts mine a bit too the way everything is spelled out exactly, it’s a challenge but I’m invested now and I want to know what happens!
mizhenka
Have you read “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”, too? If so, which did you prefer?
esther
if you liked the book this much i think you should reread it. not finding out who commissioned charlotte with the translation of the book is missing a substantial part of the story.