Book Review: THE HISTORY OF LOVE, by Nicole Krauss

I bought this book on a whim (read: I like the cover, it's pretty), and was pleasantly surprised to find that THE HISTORY OF LOVE is not quite as cheesy and sentimental as the title suggests--in fact, it was very good, and not cheesy at all. Told from the perspective of several narrators, ranging in age from eleven-years-old to eighty, the large plot is laced loosely around a little-known book titled, you guessed it, The History of Love. Not until the last few pages does the story really come together in a beautiful, simple finale.

Actually, THE HISTORY OF LOVE reminds me more than a little of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close--which makes sense, I suppose, when a Google search reveals that Krauss is, in fact, married to Jonathan Safran Foer. I won't go into the similarities between the two books, but for an interesting article on the duo, click here.

I enjoyed HISTORY so much that I bustled off to the bookstore right after I finished it to see if the copy of her first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was still on the shelf where I'd seen it on Sunday: it was not. Neither was the last copy of The History of Love. Apparently, I'm not the only one rushing out to snatch up her books.

RATING: 4