The History of Love: a book review

Tom Waits groveled profoundly from two Sony speakers as I sipped my chocolate milk from the carton. I wiped the remains of the drink from my upper lip with my right hand as with my left I turned the pages of the newest novel I was reading, “The History of Love,” by Nicole Krauss. It was hot. I flipped a switch and the ceiling fan above me accelerated, spinning quickly like planets revolving around the sun. Soon I turned another page, then another, then another. I opened a window. The pages seemed to be turning themselves, almost as quickly as the fan was rotating. I was oblivious to the heat, to the fan, to Tom Waits, to chocolate milk. I was in the world of “The History of Love” and I was sad to leave it when finally the last page turned and I saw only the book’s summary which hardly does it justice.
Like Tom Waits, ceiling fans on hot days, and delicious chocolate milk mustaches, Ms. Krauss newest novel made me glad to be alive.
It is the quiet, yet elegant, tale of a book called “The History of Love.” Yes, in short, it is a book about a book. But it is so much more. It is the story of the people about whom the book tells; it is the story of the hands into which the book falls; it is the story of the book’s author. But, ultimately, “The History of Love,” is about living.
Krauss guides us through the interwoven lives of several New Yorkers: young teenager Alma Singer, who is named for every girl in “The History of Love“(confusing I know, just read the book); Leo Gursky, an elderly, lonely man, who once wrote a book about his lost love from across the sea; a famous writer with a mysterious secret and a fascination with Spanish literature; and a young boy called Bird who thinks he is the messiah.
Each of the book’s characters are colorfully and carefully painted; clearly Ms. Krauss took great pains to not only make them believable, but also sympathetic and magnetic. The young Miss. Singer and old Mr. Gursky are particularly wonderful characters, each struggling to determine what their purpose is, at opposite points in their lives, and what it means to truly love someone, whether friend or lover. In my recent reading adventures I have found few characters to be as indelibly charming as these two protagonists. Leo Gursky is a new favorite character.
Amidst the mass production of Grishams and Creightons and Kings, books written with the bottom line in mind, it is nice to see young talent taking their art seriously, crafting works of fiction which call to mind the genius of an older generation, a generation of Kafka and Borge and T.S. Eliot. Nicole Krauss is in the class of other young writers like Jonathon Safran Foer who wrote the popular “Everything is Illuminated, and she surpasses the talents of writers like Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity,” “About a Boy”) and Mark Haddon (“The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-time). “The History of Love” is the book to read if you have had doubts about modern fiction, it will restore your confidence in the possibilities of the modern writer. If you never doubted their possibilities the book will still a be an exciting and poignant piece of literature.
However, don’t expect the book to help you escape the world as you know it. Rather, it will likely set you down in the midst of that world’s confusion and then set out to make you know your own skin more intimately. In the end you will come out fulfilled. Krauss’s book reminds us, rather effectively, that this thing we call “living” is simultaneously full of pain and full of joy, full of hope and full of doubt, full of beauty and full of ugliness. And somehow, that’s why it’s worth enduring.
”The History of Love” is an emotionally charged, imaginative, and painfully real look at what happens when we allow ourselves to love. Like it’s main themes, the book is at once both heartbreaking and heart-mending. Out of 12 this book deserves a 9.5.

Coming next week: a look at current bestseller “Children of Men” by P.D. James, the inspiration for the highly acclaimed film of the same title.

Beasts Of No Nation: A Book Review

Recent Harvard grad Uzodinma Iweala's new, and first, novel "Beasts of No Nation," is nothing short of astonishing. Ripe with powerful imagery, colorful language, and effectively moving characters, it is the poignant tale of a young, African boy's coming of age. However, it is no "Catcher in the Rye," no "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," no "Great Expectations." "Beasts of No Nation" is a unique and even unusual account of what it means to grow up.
Set in an unnamed West African country, the novel traces a young boy's journey as part of a unit of guerrilla fighters in the midst of a bloody civil war. When his father is killed and his mother and sister kidnapped, the boy, named Agu, is forced to join a violent group of rag-tag soldiers, led by a volatile leader, called only Commandant. Commandant immediately likes Agu and protects the boy from the rough ways of the hardened soldiers around him. As the story progresses Agu is immersed into the world of guns and bloodshed and fear. He finds himself stabbing, and shooting, and being shot at. He finds himself running, and hiding. He finds himself sleeping in trenches filled with water, in pits full of infested dead bodies, in treacherous heat, and on an empty stomach. And Agu finds himself asking some of the most difficult moral questions with which mankind is faced.
He wonders if he is damned since he has killed innocent women and children. He wonders if God will ever forgive him for the violent actions he is forced to perform. He fears he is becoming a monster, a beast; that he will no longer be able to live a normal life, a life as simply a boy. It becomes clear that he will not. He ponders whether killing is ever right, whether revenge is ever worth seeking, and whether any cause is worth dying for. And he desires to know whether there is really any light in this dark world.
This book is a powerfully emotional story.
Iweala presents all this in an original and creative style. Much like William Faulkner did, Iweala writes in the vernacular with which his characters speak. Agu narrates the tale with an obvious accent, leaving various words out, especially articles, and repeating others as someone might whose first language is not English and who is trying to emphasis something. For many readers this might be a deterrent to reading the book, but that would a mistake. This style allows Iweala to narrow in on the internal emotion and pain Agu is feeling; by it readers are drawn deep into the boy's shattered soul: his disconnection with his former life and his disturbed youthfulness . It also allows Iweala to more effectively change the pace and emphasis of the narrative. Should the style make for a difficult read in the books first few pages, as it did for me, fight through it, for I can assure you, that will change. You will be arrested by it by the second chapter.
Iweala has a great talent for putting the reader in the midst of the story's setting. He pays astonishing attention to detail, without boring the reader, and he knows how to appeal to all of the readers senses. It is exceedingly clear what Agu is feeling and seeing and hearing and tasting, and the effect of those sensory experiences are equally as clear.
Readers, keep your eye on the young, talented Iweala. He is an important voice for our generation with a unique moral vision; a resonant and applicable voice for our modern world, one which faces the challenges our world faces head on and which confronts their effects on us. And he dares his readers to engage them alongside him. Remember his name- he will be around for quite some time.
"Beasts Of No Nation" is a novel which effected me like few recent novels have, and it can you too. It is the winner of The L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum Award for first fiction, the Sue Kaufman prize for first fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. It was also named a best book of the year by Time Magazine, People Magazine, Slate Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and New York Magazine. It gets a 9 out of 12 on my own scale.

"Beasts of No Nation" is published by Harper Perennial in a gorgeous new edition. Run to your nearest book store and demand they sell you a copy- immediately.



With comments, questions, concerns, insults, insights, and/or compliments, and recommendations for books to review, email me at dakern@uncc.edu. I like lots of email.