Product Description

This extraordinary, heartbreaking novel is truly a history of love: a tale brimming with laughter, passion, and soaring imaginative power. Nicole Krauss's novel features some of the most memorable characters to be seen in contemporary fiction. Leo Gursky who opens the book is an elderly curmudgeon eking out an existence in New York, full of hopeful memories from his childhood and dreams about love and what he has lost. Meanwhile Alma, a young teenager, is trying to find a solution to her mother’s loneliness and takes several eccentric paths on her quest to bring happiness back to her family.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6090 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Daily Mail
‘A wonderful novel erupting with life . . . building to a perfect, heartbreaking end’

Spectator
‘Devastating . . . One of the most passionate vindications of the written word in recent fiction. It takes one’s breath away’

Sunday Telegraph
‘Wonderfully affecting . . . brilliant, touching and remarkably poised’

Customer Reviews

Loved it!
This book was intense that I had to read it a few times. Superbly written makes the characters come alive. You really do feel the pain of love and at times I felt like jumping into the novel!

This book has said to have taken the world by storm and it is not difficult to see why. Enjoyed it thoroughly but had to read a few times not for more enjoyment but because I am sure that there were times that I was lost by the power of it that I feared I may have missed something important in the plot.

Very pleasant read
This novel hss its faults. The two principal narrators are good company and pleasingly distinctive. However, the perhaps overcomplicated plot requires passages narrated by neither character (only by an anonymous authorial voice) and this interrupts the flow of the book and spoils its symmetry. In its disregard for such forms it is self-consciously post-modern, no doubt so that the author can avoid looking old-fashioned - because, at heart, this is a very sentimental tale.
All that said, the story is witty and highly amusing, which is no mean feat. Recommended.

Don't read it - listen to it!
I "heard" this book last year, and I must say I hadn't been so enthralled by a piece of fiction for years.
I bought the book several months later to give it to a friend for his birthday, but then realised how complicated the plot, and especially the constant change of narrator, was.
I don't think I would have enjoyed "the History of Love" so much had I read it and not "heard" it. The voices of the different actors make the "who's speaking" very clear and really add a dimension to the characters. The actor who read Leo's part especially, is amazing.
I cannot recommend buying the Audio Book highly enough.