Written by Nicole Krauss, this is a book within a book and stories within stories—hence the perplexity. There are two distinct story lines/plots (as well as several other minor ones) that take a very long time to connect, so the chapter changes between them are utterly jarring, a kind of literary whiplash.
The two main stories: • Leo Gursky’s story spans 70 years beginning when he is a 10-year-old Jewish boy in Slonim, Poland and ending when he is in his 80s, living alone in an apartment in New York City. As a child, he fell in love with his playmate, Alma Mereminski. When she is 20 and Nazi Germany begins to threaten Poland, Alma’s father whisks her to the United States for her safety. Unbeknownst to Leo, Alma is pregnant. He swears he will never love another. He, too, makes his way to the United States after his entire village—except for him—is slaughtered by Hitler’s troops. Leo is a writer, and he pens a novel called “The History of Love” in which every female character is named Alma after Leo’s one true love. He entrusts the only copy to his best friend, Zvi Litvinoff, who flees to Chile. Zvi presumes Leo is dead and publishes the novel—under his own name. Only 2,000 copies were printed in Spanish, and it quickly becomes lost in boxes in booksellers’ basements.
• Alma Singer is a precocious 12-year-old girl living in an apartment with New York City with her widowed mother, Charlotte, and her brother, nicknamed Bird. Bird is convinced he is a “lamed vovnik,” one of a group of 36 hidden saints in Jewish folklore who are responsible for the fate of the world. Charlotte has spent the past five years grieving for her dead husband, and the children acutely feel her pain and loss, as well as their own. The couple’s favorite novel was “The History of Love,” which is why they named their daughter Alma. Alma’s quest is to help her mother find a new love, and when a mysterious man named Jacob Marcus offers to pay Charlotte $100,000 to translate “A History of Love” from Spanish into English, Alma is inspired. In addition to playing matchmaker, Alma is determined to find the original Alma after whom she is named. Eventually, Alma figures out the true identity of Jacob Marcus, and the two stories slowly—very, very slowly—begin to merge.
And the ending? It’s quite creative…but just as confusing as the rest of the novel. This is an incredibly sad story. Ultimately, it is about significant, irreparable loss—loss of loved ones, loss of dreams, loss of country, loss of what is rightfully one’s own.
While this complex literary novel often left me perplexed, once I figured out the rhythm of the writing, characters, and plotlines, I enjoyed it. As the reader, you’ll have to work a bit, but it’s worth it if you appreciate imaginative and artistic literature that strives to be different than mainstream fiction.
