Since finishing The History of Love a couple of nights ago, I've read and re-read the novel's last few pages. The first time, it induced a chill and a shiver down my spine, and simultaneously with that, that odd quietly overwhelming feeling of being momentarily filled with something very warm and larger than myself which manifests itself as a sudden lump in the throat; and I feel that twinge anew each time I read those closing passages.
The beauty and the especial charm of The History of Love lies, I think, in the simplicity with which it tackles its subjects. It's an unassuming little thing, gracefully trailing its fingers across swathes of a deep, unanswerable sadness and sense of loss and absence which underlies the lives of all of its major protagonists, both those who are overtly present (Leo, Alma S, Bird, Charlotte, and in a way Bruno) and those who make themselves felt through or in their own absences (Alma M and Isaac in particular, but also Zvi and perhaps Rosa), and eventually tracing the outlines of a spirit-uplifting path through those thickets, weaving at the same time a subtle and sustained meditation on the transformative and effectual power of literature, writing and words. We've seen this done before, not least in Krauss's husband JSF's Everything Is Illuminated, but while that one was good, this is better, I think - more modest but ultimately more touching and more perfectly conceived and formed.
It's strange, though - for the vast majority of the novel, I was enjoying it but I didn't feel myself to have properly fallen for it,[*] in either sense of the phrase. It wasn't like the first time I read The Secret History, or Invisible Cities, or A Wild Sheep Chase, where I felt the whole time that I was reading a book which was speaking directly to me and which would become one of my favourites - but (and noting that I wouldn't put The History of Love up with those kinds of iconic books for myself) with Krauss's novel, it's really the ending that seals the deal, so to speak, capping everything off incontrovertibly and just right. I was so looking forward to reading this, and it was worth the anticipation.
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[*] On that note: Nicolette, who's also reading the book at the moment, prodded me a couple of days ago by commenting that Krauss is beautiful and wondering aloud (well, by email) whether the author photo in the paperback edition had caused me to fall in love with her...and, while I suspect that those photos are often more than a little misleading, my gentle interlocutor was, as far as these things go, right on the money.
