To
be completely honest, I had a hard time discerning the meaning in this
book for a while. For some reason, I tend to have some difficulties with more
contemporary books like this. Granted, most of the “contemporary” books I read
(i.e. my current read, Amy Poehler’s Yes
Please) aren’t really written to
have any sort of profound meaning…
From
what I could gather though, Krauss seems to be suggesting that love isn’t all rose petals and love notes
and jewelry and chocolate and tears of joy. Sometimes love hurts us more than
it benefits us. Sometimes we struggle to understand or cope with love. Love is complicated. Ultimately, most humans, like the characters in this book, are driven by love (whether that be good or bad).
Going
into this book called The History of Love
you expect a romantic, The Notebook-esque
love story complete with reunions and tears and everyone living happily ever
after. Instead you are introduced to characters that all struggle to cope with
the loss of love. Even though they all suffered these losses long ago, they are
still motivated by the “leftover” love/attachment.
à Leo is so enthralled with Alma he fails to move on
with his life. He spends his life alone, thinking about how things could’ve
been, instead of trying to create a new life. His proudest achievement is the
book he wrote about falling in love with Alma and he (possibly) has a heart
attack when he finds out that it was not in fact lost forever, but published by
his friend.
à Alma’s actions are primarily driven by her love
for her late father. She reads the books he used to read and even wears his
clothes. She is so fascinated by The
History of Love because she knows it was very meaningful to her father.
Were it not for her love for her father and also her father’s love for the
book, she never would’ve gone on this journey to discover the book’s
background. Alma’s mother is also affected by the loss of her husband, but her
love for him doesn’t really motivate her to do much of anything, it mostly
inhibits her. It inhibits her from finding new love and it inhibits her from
maintaining a healthy, active lifestyle-she frequently demonstrates serious symptoms
of depression such as lying on the couch/in her room for days on end, and
lacking motivation to do much of anything like clean or parent.
Krauss
focuses not on the joyous, glamorous parts of love but instead the messy,
complicated, heartbreaking parts of love. Proving that although humans live for
connections/love, sometimes the one thing we live for can dictate (or
inhibit) our actions too much for our own good.
