The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Last year, E joined a group of UC Berkeley undergrads building a race car for the collegiate FSAE competition. The group built a Formula One race car, basically from scratch. That the team is comprised primarily of undergraduates with no formal training, university funding, or adult supervision, is to me quite an impressive feat.

The point, of course, was to enter the car in an international competition that takes place very year at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. Fontana is just outside of Los Angeles. A suburb of LA, really.

We arrived for the four-day competition and checked into our hotel in nearby Ontario. After visiting the racetrack and the car paddocks, I left E with the team and began my vacation.

I wasn't really planning to take a vacation that week. I was going to work from the hotel room during the days and then head to the racetrack to watch the events. That was my plan, so I had only brought one book for pleasure reading. So much for plans.

What I ended up doing was taking care of a few pressing work matters each morning, and then swimming in the hotel pool, sitting in Starbucks, shopping, hanging with the team at the track, and basically just reading a lot. On the second day, I finished the one book I brought. I had a problem.

Did I mention that I currently have well over a hundred unread books on my shelves? Here I was, with three days left in my "vacation," and I had no book to read. The situation was dire-- I had to take desperate measures and go buy a book.

There is a Borders Outlet, of all things, at the Ontario Mills Mall. It is full of heavily discounted remaindered books, and the entire store held only one book that interested me: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. (And score-- it was only five dollars!)

I loved this book. I would probably rank it among my favorite books of all time. According to Amazon,

"Nicole Krauss's The History of Love is a hauntingly beautiful novel about two characters whose lives are woven together in such complex ways that even after the last page is turned, the reader is left to wonder what really happened. In the hands of a less gifted writer, unraveling this tangled web could easily give way to complete chaos. However, under Krauss's watchful eye, these twists and turns only strengthen the impact of this enchanting book.

The History of Love spans of period of over 60 years and takes readers from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe to present day Brighton Beach. At the center of each main character's psyche is the issue of loneliness, and the need to fill a void left empty by lost love. Leo Gursky is a retired locksmith who immigrates to New York after escaping SS officers in his native Poland, only to spend the last stage of his life terrified that no one will notice when he dies. ("I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even though I'm not thirsty.") Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer vacillates between wanting to memorialize her dead father and finding a way to lift her mother's veil of depression. At the same time, she's trying to save her brother Bird, who is convinced he may be the Messiah, from becoming a 10-year-old social pariah. As the connection between Leo and Alma is slowly unmasked, the desperation, along with the potential for salvation, of this unique pair is also revealed. "

This book is not for everyone. It is pretty difficult to follow because of its non-linear narrative and disparate styles. But that is exactly what I loved about it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, too, I made a connection between The History of Love and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. They both have that sensibility of intertwining disjointedness with an undercurrent of a darker tension, the Holocaust. It was after I read the book that I found out that Krauss and Foer are married. What a powerhouse literary couple they make.

I can't help but think that the similarities between the books are not coincidental. Yet, how can two people, no matter how close, transmit such a thing as a subconscious literary sensibility? Or is it that similarity that drew them together in the first place? Whatever the case, I for one am glad that they found each other.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss