Some good things can be said about this novel. It is a book about a book, which always puts me in a positive mood.
The title hero of this book, the book 'The History of Love', was written in Yiddish by a young man in love, in Poland at about the start of WW2; first published in Spanish in Chile by a friend of the original writer, a journalist refugee Pole in Valparaiso; one copy bought by an Israeli in Buenos Aires, who gave it to his English wife, who read it to their American children in New York; the mother translates it into English, and the English text somehow finds its way to the attention of now 79 year old retired locksmith Leo Gursky, who wrote it 60 years ago for Alma, who later became the mother of famous writer Isaac Moritz. The daughter of the translator is called Alma Singer. Maybe you hear the bell ring at this moment, the bell of allusions.
So we have history (WW2, Holocaust) and literature and love and fate. This is all very well, but: the plot is impossibly complicated. One might, in a bad mood, call it pretentious (some have done that).
Another flaw: the plot has two narrators, Alma Singer, 14, and Leo Gursky, 79. Both contemporary in New York. And both sound like teenagers. There may be system behind that, but it is not convincing. Let's face it, the narration sounds like 'young adult' fiction.
Should a young writer nowadays even try to tackle such a complicated and complex 'historical' subject? I have serious doubts about that. It is very hard to be 'original' about these subjects. There should be a very good reason to go there again. I do not see that very good reason in this case. And I am a friend of simplicity anyway. Making a plot more complex does not make it better.
