Books I've Read: The History of Love

 

I found this one in the bookshelf in our office breakroom.  Because we run a Writers progamme as part of our Festival, we often have books given to us at work and when they've been read, they end up in the library in the Whare Kai.  Plus, other people (myself included) often offload books they've read into those shelves if they're not ones they want to keep at home. Anyway, this one looked interesting enough, and I needed something to read, so I picked it up.

It was one of those books that have a variety of POVs, all linked by a single thing - in this case, an obscure book called The History of Love.  

There's Leo, an old Polish man who has had one great love in his life and his love was so huge, it spilled over into a book he wrote to contain his emotions. Both the book and the woman are long gone now, and Leo is in New York, trying to prove to himself he's still alive.  At least for one more day.

Also in New York is Alma, a fourteen-year-old girl whose father has died, leaving her mother desperately lonely.  When they met, her father gave her mother a copy of a book called The History of Love, in Spanish.  when a stranger writes and asks her mother to translate the book into English, Alma decides the man asking for this must be her mother's next soulmate.

As the various characters in this book circle closer and closer to the truth about The History of Love, all their lives might be changed forever.

I enjoyed this book.  It was well written and the various different relationships revealed themselves quietly.  It wasn't something completely absorbing or mind-blowing, but it was interesting enough to keep me reading.  It was also quite sad, or maybe, melancholy would be a better word.  It left me with a bit of an ache in my heart for all the lost opportunities the characters had.

So I'd recommend this one.  It's not right up there among my favourite books of the year, but I did enjoy it .

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author.

Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the lost love who, sixty years ago in Poland, inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives...