"The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss - book for July 2008

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"The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss - book for July 2008

Post by Clare Admin » Mon Jun 30, 2008 10:39 am

This is a beautifully written novel with two main characters, Leo and Alma. Leo is an elderly, lonely Jewish man who survived the war in Poland and now lives in New York. Alma, pregnant with Leo’s child, had also moved from Poland to America but by the time Leo joined her five years later, she had married another man. Ever since, Leo has mourned the loss of his true love and his son.

As a young man, Leo had written a novel “The History of Love” with Alma as the name of the main character. It was not published by Leo but he entrusted the manuscript to a friend who emigrated to Chile and who later claimed that it was lost. However, unknown to Leo, it was published in Chile. This book surfaces in a household where Alma Singer, a 15-year old girl, lives. She was named after a character in her parents' favorite novel “The History of Love”. Her widowed mother has been hired to translate it from its original Spanish. The mystery deepens as passages from Leo’s novel merge with the existing novel.

The lives of the characters are woven together in many complex ways and the plot is sometimes intricate but it is well worth reading.

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