The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

I found The History of Love in the back of a friend’s bookshelf, and wasn’t really sure of what I’d find. It turns out I found one of the most remarkable novels I have read in years.

Even now I’m not sure I can adequately express even a portion of it. It truly is a history of love, beginning with a little boy’s love for a girl, which is also every boy’s love for every girl. His love leads him to write the girl a book; he wants to make her laugh. Years later and a continent away, a young man buys the book and gives it to his girlfriend. They name their child Alma, after every girl in the novel. As Alma struggles to find something or someone to take away her mother’s loneliness, she starts unraveling the history of the book, and of its author, and of his love, and every love that was and will be.

I was reminded of Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer when I read this. It shares a humour and depth that demands attention but doesn’t take itself too seriously. After all, love, with its weighted consequences, doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is truly one of the best novels I have ever read. It’s complicated and confusing and at times I couldn’t keep track of the chronology, but the confusion only strengthens the characters and heightens the sense of love as a remarkable negotiation of chance.

I’d give it an immediate 9.5 strings of yarn spanning oceans between a girl and a boy. Or rather, the 9 would go between the girl and boy. The remaining half would go between Alma and Misha. Please read it.