About this title: Leo Gursky is barely surviving, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But life wasn't always like this: 60 years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. And though Leo doesn't know it, that book survived, inspiring fabulous circumstances, even love.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780393328622ISBN:0393328627
Description: Good. Standard used condition. May have light reading or storage wear. All orders processed within 2 business days. Ships from Foxboro MA. read more
Binding: Audio CD
Publisher: Recorded Books LLC
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9781419340727ISBN:1419340727
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Description: Good. 2006-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Binding: Audio Cassette
Publisher: Recorded Books, LLC
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9781419340703ISBN:1419340700
Description: Very Good. Seven fine unabridged audio cassettes in x/library clamshell case. Ten hours of listening narrated by a cast of several voices. Daily shipping. read more
Description: Good. 0393328627 Paperback with moderate shelf-wear, rubbing, fraying, tears, fading, chipping, and bumping to the cover, edges, corners, and spine. The spine is creased from the book being read. Inside pages are free from underlining, note taking, and/or highlighting. Book is in stock and ready to ship same or next business day. ELIGIBLE FOR! Buy with confidence! Please leave feedback after your purchase. It helps other buyers know we are a responsible and reliable seller. Thank you! read more
Description: Fine. 0393328627 Ships next business day. NEW/UNREAD! ! ! Text is Clean and Unmarked! --Be Sure to Compare Seller Feedback and Ratings before Purchasing--Has a small black ink mark on bottom/exterior edge of pages. May have light shelf wear to cover from storage, if any. read more
"If the opportunity to read this book in one sitting would have been available to me, I probably would have taken it. Unfortunately my job tends to cramp my reading style more often than not (admittedly not the worst problem in the world to have), but sometimes I can't help but think about how much reading I could get done if I didn't have to spend the best hours of my day doing work. Oh well. I suppose that is what retirement will be for.
I really loved this book. The characters spoke to me and they became real, flesh and blood people. Sometimes non-linear storylines bother me. And I've begun to think that is because most writers are not capable of telling a story somewhat out-of-order without making it confusing. Nicole Krauss successfully employed the mechanism in The History of Love and I loved it. I kept reading to find out what it all meant. I kept reading to be surprised--and I was, pleasantly so.
There are three concurrent storylines: Leo Gursky, an 80-something Polish-American immigrant who moved to New York to escape the Nazis. He lost his family, his dignity, his youth, and when he successfully arrived in New York five years later, he discovered that the girl he'd loved since the age of 10, the girl whose "kiss was a question he wanted to spend the rest of his life answering" had married another, assuming Leo had been a casualty in the war.
Alma Singer is a teen girl, living with her mother and younger brother. Her father had died of cancer when she was a child. Alma was named for the character of an obscure book, The History of Love, written by Zvi Litvinoff. Her brother suspects he could be the messiah and her mother is still mourning the loss of her husband and has shown no interest in dating or ever marrying again. This concerns Alma.
Zvi Litvinoff is the author of The History of Love, a book that was originally written in Yiddish and thinly printed/released in Spanish. Litvinoff is dead before the beginning of the novel so the portions of his story are told posthumously.
Krauss keeps you guessing as to what these characters have in common and it's not immediately apparent how these three characters are connected but by the end, everything is revealed and this story of missed connections, love lost, pride, humanity, sadness, aging and what could have been, all comes together. If I hadn't finished this book in a public place, I probably would have cried tears of happiness, and the whole time my heart would have been breaking. It was very touching. Fantastic story. Excellent."
"This beautiful story is about an eighty year old Jewish-Polish immigrant and retired locksmith, Leo Gursky; a fourteen year old girl, Alma Singer, who is trying to find a way to make her mother not sad anymore; and Zvi Litvinoff, the author of an obscure book called The History of Love. What they each have to do with one another isn't at first apparent, but becomes all too clear and inseparable as you read on.
It is a love story, a story of survival and ageing, of memory and imagination, of sadness and loss. It is a puzzle, a mystery, a comedy, a tragedy. It's quite simply wonderful.
Leo arrived in America when he was 25, fleeing the Nazis and following the woman he loved, Alma. But he is too late. We get his story in first person, in a distinct style, honest and hopeful.
Alma's father died when she was little and she occupies herself with trying to find a new man for her mother, while her younger brother, Bird, becomes convinced he's a Jewish messiah. She tells her side of the story in short brief chapters, notebook or journal style. Later, Bird also gets his own voice.
The third narrator is a third-person omniscient voice that retells the life of Zvi, but in such a way that the truth isn't clear at first. It's a great deal of fun putting it all together and realising the truth, though we're cleverly handled by Krauss who reveals things only when she wants to.
It is not told in a chronological way, though it seems so at first - in fact, Zvi is dead, Alma's story begins before Leo starts his, even though his comes first. It's clever and extremely well managed, especially considering how hard it must be to give voice to a character without them spoiling all the surprises.
There's a great deal of humour in this book, which makes the poignant sadness and tragedy all the more bittersweet. The writing is beautiful and original. I remembered a few pages in particular - these are from Leo:
As soon as the acne cleared my hairline began to recede, as if it wanted to disassociate itself from the embarrassment of my face. (p14)
I meant to pat his arm but he moved to brush something from his eye, the result being that I ended up patting his man-breast. Not knowing what else to do, I gave it a squeeze. (p88)
I considered myself a spy infiltrating an alien world: the domain of the female. With the excuse of gathering evidence, I stole Mrs Stanislawski's enormous panties off the clothesline. Alone in the outhouse, I sniffed them with abandon. I buried my face in the crotch. I put them on my head. I raised them and let them balloon in the breeze like the flag of a new nation. When my mother pushed open the door, I was trying them on for size. They could have fit three of me. (p127)
And Alma:
"You're not Dr. Eldridge are you?" I asked. "I am," he said. My heart sank. Thirty years must have passed since the photograph on the book was taken. I didn't have to think for very long to know that he couldn't help me with the thing I had come about, because even if he deserved a Nobel for being the greatest living paleontologist, he also deserved one for being the oldest.
I didn't know what to say. "I read your book," I managed, "and I'm thinking of becoming a paleontologist." He said: "Well don't sound so disappointed." (p54)
There are lots more quotes I could share but it would take me forever to find them.
The History of Love tells an old story in a new and original way, giving a fresh voice to characters that feel familiar, and a breath of life into the classic tale of immigrants fleeing World War II and trying to put their lives back together, but failing. I came to really care for Leo, and Alma and her family, and feel a surge of anger at the injustice, and also a sense of calm at the inevitability of it all. It's going to take me a while to really understand the effect of this book, but even knowing the truth, I'd re-read it and discover more.
I can't remember the last book I read that seemed this real, this alive, this wise and honest and truthful, with its blur of place and time so that you forget where you are and even, at times, when. Identity also loses its normally distinct shape, as walls disappear, distances shrink, and a search for the mysterious Alma of The History of Love brings the characters together. The past merges with the present in Krauss's brilliant book, laughter mingles with tears, and wisdom with foolishness. A superb book."
"A powerful story about the loneliness of an elderly man, a Holocaust survivor, Leopold Gursky. He is a writer who is never heard, at least not in his own voice. Krauss paints the portrait of invisibility with such sorrowful accuracy. Leon is completely alone and "all I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen." Because of this, he purposely draws negative attention to himself, just for the sake of getting noticed. Such as dropping change on the floor in a busy checkout line. The most painful element of his invisibility is that his son does not known that he exists, having been raised as another man's child. The other voice in the story is 15 year old Alma Singer, named after the Alma in a book called The History of Love. Her loneliness and sadness of losing a father early brings her to Leon and their journeys cross in a most amazing way. Quite an ingenious story of a girl's coming of age and an old man's dissolution into eternal invisibility. Leon's story is heartbreaking, especially to the reader who has the ability to step back and view the puzzle as a whole, with all star crossed pieces in place. An amazing book.
notes...*spoilers*
In the middle of it, and thoroughly enjoying my first non-manga, non-romance adult book that I've read in quite some time. There are three voices to the story (as yet) : Leo Gursky, an 80 year old Holocaust survivor living in NYC. He is completely and utterly alone. His is a sad story. His biggest fear is to be invisible and to die unknown. Because of this he has a tendancy to draw attention to himself in negative ways - such as purposely dropping his change in a long line at the cashier, or purposely not knowing how to order a coffee at Starbucks, and even posing as a nude model for an art class. He and his neighbor (with whom he shares the same Polish/Russian hometown of Slomin) check up on each other once a day, just to make sure that if the other has died that they will not go unnoticed. Heartbreaking, really. And even more so once his story begins to unfold. He loved a yet named girl in Slonim, who escapes before the war, unknownst to him she leaves pregnant with his child. The Nazis come, he loses his family, and Leo hides in the forest for 3.5 years. By the time he gets to NYC (where she is) years later, she has already married and Leo's child, now 5, is being raised as another man's son. She did not receive his letters and presumed him dead. Now Leo, unable to ackonwledge his son, watches from a distance and when his son becomes a somewhat notable writer, he still cannot face him. At his emotionally high place in the novel, when he is at Starbucks, thinking that the world is great, all comes crashing down when he sees his son's obituary in the newspaper. He attends the funeral, pretending to speak only Yiddish, so as not to give the game away. After the funeral he realizes that he has lived his life for the son he could never acknowledge, and does not know what to do with himself now that he is gone.
The second voice is 15 year old (?) Alma, whose widowed mother has begun to translate a story from Spanish into English - "The History of Love" purportedly written by a Polish immigratnt to S. America (name...). Alma tries to find a man for her mother and also tries to learn more about her adventurous Israeli father who died of cancer when she was 7. She has a habit of lying and also has a tendancy of forging letters in her mother's name, mostly to capture the interest of another man for her. Alma herself is named for the main "character" in the book that her mother is translating. Her younger brother "Bird" is a naive religious outcast in NYC an believes himself to possibily be the messiah or one of the 36 Just Men (lamed vovnik). Bird has a very mystical quality to him.
The third voice seems to be a third-person account of the purported author of The History of Love and provides unbiased details of this man's life.
The novel as a whole is sprinkled with Jewish history and Yiddish phrases, which I find appealing although I don't understand all of the words. I am curious to see how the unrelated characters will come together, although I have my ideas.
finished it...
wow. I knew it was going in the direction of Leon being the true author of A History of Love. However, I didn't expect Avi Litvinoff's wife Rose to play accomplice in the way she did. Avi, Leon's envious friend, is entrusted with the manuscript when he flees Poland. Years pass and he assumes that Leon has been killed, and he eventually publishes the novel under his own name, after changing the names of characters....except for Alma's name. Because without Alma there never would have been a story. It is this key that leads Alma Singer to Leon Gursky 60 years later. It turns out Rosa finds out about Leon, who sends a letter asking for the manuscript back. however, it has already been published in S. America so she claims it was destroyed in a flood. However, she goes so far to flood the house so that both his and Zvi's manuscripts are destroyed. Avi dies with a heavy heart thinking that he lied to Rosa all those years and was never quite worthy of her.
Alma's mother is asked to translate it by Jacob Marcus, who remembers being read part of it as a child. Alma discovers that Jacob Marcus is the character of one of Isaac Moritz's books (Leon's son). However, he dies before she can reach him. The fact that it was really Isaac was quite a shocker. Bird takes a call from Bernard Moritz (the brother, as Alma left a letter for Isaac)....Isaac doubted his paternity upon finding letters from Leon to Alma Mereminski, with parts of the manuscripts inside. He was looking for the author, correctly believing him to be his father. So, in the end, Leon's son does read The History of Love, believing the author to be his father.
upon Isaac's death, the manuscript Leon sent him (Words for Everything) is being published as the last novel of Isaac...it is mistakenly believed to be his writing. This part is left unresolved in the story. Leon is happy knowing that his son may have actually read at least part of it, and therefore would know who his father really is. However, does Leon ever get the credit he deserves? Or is the fact that he gets acknowledged by his son enough??
Alma Singer herself grows a lot in the story. I was sad that the relationship with Misha is never touched back upon. Do they work things out? Bird, to neither of their knowing, arranges a meeting between Alma and Leon in Central Park. Bird mistakenly believes that Alma is looking for her "real" father and tries to help her out. Of course this notion is ridiculous, as there is no secret regarding her paternity.
One of the saddest surprises in the end is that Bruno died in 1941, by Leon's own admission. Therefore, he really and truly is alone. The one friend the reader though he had is not there. Strangely, this friend appeared months after Leon changed his ways from being a bitter old man into a better one, albeit invisible.
another great line from the book - "those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone""
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
