Customer Reviews: Read 56 more reviews...
 Loved it! August 20, 2008
This book was intense that I had to read it a few times. Superbly written makes the characters come alive. You really do feel the pain of love and at times I felt like jumping into the novel!
This book has said to have taken the world by storm and it is not difficult to see why. Enjoyed it thoroughly but had to read a few times not for more enjoyment but because I am sure that there were times that I was lost by the power of it that I feared I may have missed something important in the plot.
 Very pleasant read July 10, 2008
This novel hss its faults. The two principal narrators are good company and pleasingly distinctive. However, the perhaps overcomplicated plot requires passages narrated by neither character (only by an anonymous authorial voice) and this interrupts the flow of the book and spoils its symmetry. In its disregard for such forms it is self-consciously post-modern, no doubt so that the author can avoid looking old-fashioned - because, at heart, this is a very sentimental tale.
All that said, the story is witty and highly amusing, which is no mean feat. Recommended.
Don't read it - listen to it! June 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I "heard" this book last year, and I must say I hadn't been so enthralled by a piece of fiction for years.
I bought the book several months later to give it to a friend for his birthday, but then realised how complicated the plot, and especially the constant change of narrator, was.
I don't think I would have enjoyed "the History of Love" so much had I read it and not "heard" it. The voices of the different actors make the "who's speaking" very clear and really add a dimension to the characters. The actor who read Leo's part especially, is amazing.
I cannot recommend buying the Audio Book highly enough.
 When love flies off the pages of a book... February 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
That's the case with "The History of Love". Its author thought that the book he wrote decades earlier was irretrievably lost. Instead, it had survived and traveled extensively, touching and changing the life of those who read it.
I especially liked the character of old Leo Gursky, drawn vividly to say the least, a touching, funny and simultaneously heartbreaking personality, who never forgot his first and only love. She had fled their native Poland during the Holocaust to go to New York and, by the time he is able to reach her, and learns that he has a son, it's too late.
On the other side of town (we're in contemporary New York), a young girl named Alma is currently reading the translation her mother is doing of "The History of Love" -a book she knows has influenced her parents' lives- hoping that by finding out the identity of the man who had requested such translation would help her mother to find love again after her husband's untimely death. She cannot yet know that the plan she has in mind will unravel an unexpected path.
Emotional twists & turns unfold for both of these main characters, old Leo and young Alma. Without knowing each other personally and unbeknownst to them, their lives and those of their loved ones are tied by the same rope.
A tender and often wrenching story about Love in all of its forms. The only reason I gave it 3 stars instead of 4 (in the absence of that "half mark" which I find could be useful), is that, at times, it was a bit hard not to mix up the various characters described, despite their obvious pertinence to the story, especially when reaching the middle of the book. A bit confusing.
On the other hand, I did appreciate the thin but strong line between past and present, with an original juxtaposition and an elegant prose. It all comes together in the end and the message is very moving.
Not bad - but not brilliant either January 21, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I liked - the fact that it was different, well written and that it conveyed the idea of love lasting a lifetime.
I didn't like - that fact that at times the characters were confusing, that not much actually happened.
I certainly wasn't an unputdownable page turner, but none the less it is worth a read.
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