A tangled web of secrets

Aimee Dawis ,  Contributor ,  Jakarta   |  Sun, 09/07/2008 9:47 AM  |  Bookmark

The History of Love
Penguin Books
2005.

How many secrets do you hold tightly in your heart that you would never tell anyone? And how many coincidences and webs of actions may span out before the impact of such secrets is borne on the actors?

The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss, moves and disturbs me as a reader. On the one hand I am touched and gripped by the intricate tangle of circumstances which connect Alma, the female protagonist, Leopold Gursky, the Jewish author of a ground-breaking and best-selling (also called The History of Love), and the son Gursky.

On the other hand, I am put off by Krauss' descriptions of Gursky's shriveled octogenarian body and utterly depressing life.

He is so lonely he taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he is still alive, and draws attention to himself at the milk counter at Starbucks.

Perhaps Krauss is handing us the truth -- that some people do live miserably in extreme loneliness, and that most of us will get old and become less physically attractive than our younger counterparts.

In fact, no one in the novel is particularly beautiful. Alma is barely attractive and Rosa, the wife of Zvi Litvinoff (the author who plagiarizes Gursky's The History of Love and receives the credit Gursky deserves), is also attractive but not overtly or stunningly beautiful.

The men are definitely not handsome. They come across as real, and yet virtual at the same time, because of the extraordinary connections the author expertly weaves throughout the novel.

As a woman, the character I identify with most is Alma. She is 14 in Krauss' novel -- the same age as the Alma in Gursky's The History of Love. It is also Gursky's age when he falls in love with his Alma. In Krauss' The History of Love, Alma goes through the pain of losing her father and tries to find a new love for her mother. In the process, she uncovers who Alma Mereminski (Gursky's first love) really is.

While Alma's discovery is startling to most, other parts of the novel are deeply touching. When Alma talks about her awkwardness at being a teenager; the first flush of love; the pitfalls of friendship; and, most of all, the regrets and unspoken words.

How many times have we thought back to moments when we encountered our first blooming feelings of love? Alma's experiences, in a way, tell us the other side of the story -- the girl's side -- while Leopold Gursky keeps the flame of his first love alive through his narration of The History of Love.

It is no wonder that Alma's mother, who translates Gursky's The History of Love from Spanish into English for a client who lives in Venice, says the novel does not have fixed timeliness. It feels more fluid, like a montage of memories playing over and over again in a boy's mind.

Gursky's The History of Love may be a great work because it was never meant to be published. It was meant as a tribute to the memories and secrets that Gursky holds close to his heart. He would never have guessed those deepest and innermost secrets would tumble out when The History of Love gets published under Zvi Litvinoff's name.

Whereas Litvinoff, his former best friend, becomes a renowned "author" because of The History of Love, Gursky lives the remaining days of his life in extreme loneliness. For this reason, I hoped Gursky would find out that Isaac (his son born through his union with Alma Mereminski) would find out who his real father was. However, I suddenly saw the irony and sadness in that discovery, as Gursky's second and final novel would be published under his son's name.

Like The History of Love, it would become another great work attributed to the wrong author.

Some novels are capable of moving their readers to tears. Nicole Krauss' book, while infinitely capable of stirring readers' emotions, jolts us into realizing the world may be giving accolades to important works that may not be written by the rightful authors.

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.