The History of Love

Leo Gursky is an old man who escaped the holocaust as a teen. Now he's afraid he'll die without anyone noticing, so he goes around New York making a spectacle of himself as a way of avoiding invisibility. In another part of the city, 14-year-old Alma Singer mourns her dead father and tries to rouse her mother from the depression she's fallen into since his death. Meanwhile her little brother believes he could be the Messiah. Through a book called The History of Love, the lives of the old man and the girl intersect. This book rewards the patience required to follow all the threads that tie the characters together. Krauss presents a bittersweet view of the world: the characters have many hopes disappointed, but they are never less than human in pursuit of love and significance.