So what does it all mean?

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.