A History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Writing a story with a central character, dealing with a universal theme and doing so in a manner that is believable to your readers is difficult.  Doing the preceding and making your story interesting to someone else is an accomplishment.  Weaving multiple primary character's lives together, exploring a wealth of emotions and ideas with subtlety and ease all without coming across as inorganic is how Nicole Krauss rolls. 

Leo Gursky is at the end of his life and he knows it.  He enjoys being out in public and making small scenes not so much as to be an ass rather he desperately wants to be noticed by the world for something--no matter how trivial--before he passes.  When not intentionally spilling coffee at Starbucks or knocking over displays in retail stores we see bits and pieces of the utterly unremarkable life he has lead.  Grusky never spends times reminiscing on his youth but nor does he revel in the twilight of his dotage. 

Alma Singer is a fifteen year old who lost her father early in her life and searches for clues and stories to reconstruct his image in any way she can; primarily through researching her parents favorite book, A History of Love of which she was named after the main character.  She also has to concurrently deal with adolescence, a younger brother who believes he is one of God's chosen, and her mother's melancholy.

The way Leo and Alma's lives interact is through A History of Love: it's author, the story's meaning, and what the narrative itself means to each of them at extreme different ages and and a wealth of different personal experiences.  It would be easy to say the plot is clever and intriguing due to constant questions raised and the reader's yearning to understand seemingly impossible character connections, and while all that is true; this is just how Krauss writes.  There is no carefully crafted mystery or intentional twist to get a knee-jerk reaction from reader; only carefully executed complexities to provide greater enjoyment on every level without ever coming close to the realm of convolution.  

As Alma's mother works on a translation of A History of Love for a patron with curious motives, great wealth and a somewhat obscure background we see how one book--long since out of print--can unify so many lives, and connect a vast host of people in addition to seeing Leo get the notice he so desperately craves (even if he is the only one who recognizes his accomplishments) and learn that all of Alma's anxieties come from her horribly sad desire to see her mother be happy.        

Loss, and filling the void, seem to be the primary theme dealt with.  Leo has lost the great love of his life and never once sought to have a relationship with anyone else.  Later in life he finds that he has fathered son and laments never one having the smallest interaction with him.  Alma, who has already lost one parent, is terrified of distance growing between herself and her mother.  While she wants to replace the role of her father in her mother's life Alma struggles with recreating (and falsifying) her father's image in her own mind so she can selfishly expound on the handful memories she has of her father.  If I told you the story was beautiful, hilarious and heartbreaking all at once I'd understand hesitancy to believe me... 

The characters are beautifully brought to life.  Leo feels like a real old man while Alma is a vivid and comical teenage girl.  Considering the disparity of age in characters and their handles on life a real accomplishment is lack of sentimentality as to not obscure the story.  The narrative is anything but cold, but perhaps endearing from a distance.  I told myself at the outset of writing this commentary that I wouldn't mention Great House, Krauss' third novel that was nominated for the National Book of the Year award in 2012, but I can't help myself...  As well crafted as Leo and Alma's voices are, I miss the controlling, dominate, presence of the author's voice as in Great House.  I'm also aware that I couldn't voice this tiny qualm had I read the books in the order in which they were written.  I'm not sure if I can call the narrative style from A History of Love to Great House 'progress' as both as so well done, but rest assured: no matter the voice Krauss adopts you'll love every word. 

Familiar Territory and a Breakthrough

I'm stubborn.  Really hard-headed.  I've been here before, with the whole, "I'm not surprised that secondary world fantasy does nothing for me," feeling.  The question is why I keep going back. 

It's secondary world fantasy that turned me on to reading.  After reading enough, and finding some really great stuff, it was secondary world fantasy that alerted me to the fact that I love to read.  That was years ago...  Nostalgia is so very dangerous.  I've tried a few times this year to rekindle past good reading vibes, and it has nothing to do with the works I've chosen or the authors, rather, it's me.  I can't read this genre anymore.  I recently put down a well-written book that seemed to have much going for it simply because I can't suffer the genre's structure and conventions anymore.  (I could get real specific here, but no one is listening anyway so why bother?)

So what does this falling out of genre fantasy mean for me?  Well, for one thing, it's sad.  It's also awesome to severe ties and move on completely.  There has been a huge cull on my bookshelves and my TBR stack has nearly been trimmed by nearly fifty percent.  I'm happy about those points, and speaking of points it seems I'll be hitting the jackpot on my next trip to trade in books at my used book store.  I should mention I'm not completely wiping the slate clean: there are a few authors in the genre that I enjoy too much (and write to what think is a higher standard than most genre writers) that I'm not willing to part with.  Furthermore there is one series that I've been collecting--but have yet to read--that I will at least try before trading in.

It may seem that I'm narrowing my reading focus but the opposite is true.  I still think the most creative and often time profound fiction comes from the fantasy genre; I only need to work harder in seeking it out.  I'm also slowly warming up to the fact that I like science fiction.  It doesn't scare me as much as it used too, though I don't see myself trying space opera of any kind.

I've learned something new about myself and I'm coming out to tell the world.  It feels good.  

The Month in Review and of Things to Come

Oops... I almost forgot this post.  That would be the first time ever since I've started doing end of the month recaps; better late than never.

I finished Daniel Martin this month; YEAH!!!!  It took me a while--because it's beastly long and in part because I really didn't want it to end.  I love John Fowles.  A lot.  Whenever I read about John Fowles I usually see people talk about The Magus or The French Lieutenant's Woman; sometimes The Collector.  I haven't read The Magus yet, but if it is to hold up as Fowles Magnum Opus it truly must be a phenomenal effort.  Daniel Martin makes me rethink much of what I previously said about how hard it would be to trump The Windup Girl.

I also read, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss who is one of my favorite living writers.  She is amazing.  That is all.  I'll have comments up on that in a few days.  The Screwtape Letters was many many things; all of them good.  Additionally I read a very large chunk of Warriors, a short story anthology I'm plugging my way through.  April was one of those months were the reading output concerning page count was really high, just not in total works read.  And I'm okay with that.

Hmm; what else... I went to the lake and drove my friends' boat around which was fun in a "are-we-gonna-die" kinda way.  Got sunburned too.  It hurts.  Went to a funeral for my grandmother which was sad and happy in many ways.

May looks like another chunk of Warriors getting read, Acacia by David Anthony Durham and I'm aiming for at least two other titles that I've yet to decide upon.

Stay tuned.

Go read Nicole Krauss.  Start with everything she's ever written.

Guest Blogging

Are you tired of me rambling my book babble on my own blog?  If so, check out Kim's!  Her blog is not only cooler than mine, but she also let me babble there in addition to my own quiet corner of the Internet.

Difficulties of being English

Over the past few months I've been reading a lot of UK born writers and I've noticed an odd trend. This may be common sense or a regular on going joke of sorts that I hadn't previously been made aware. Apparently there was a time, not too long ago, where middle class Englsh men were thought to be fake, humorless puppets.


Off the top of my head I only came up with three writers that offered examples but there are certainly more whose work didn't stick with me as strongly as those I'm about to mention. I wouldn't say these three writers were of the same generation, nor do they possess similar styles (indeed it is the variety of their backgrounds that gave credence to the above assertion; which really isn't my assertion...) but however mockingly they all make fun of themselves, and the culture surrounding middle aged English men around the time of the 1940's through 1970's



In The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis, in a very heavy tongue-in-cheek way as the voice of a demon wrote "The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promishing among the English who take their 'sense of humour' so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame." 

John Fowles wrote many passages on the oddities of the English behavior in Daniel Martin: "I did want to be angry with her then, I'd very much have liked to be an American Jewish or a working-class father, anything other than feeling I caught that dreadful English middle-class trap of never showing or saying what you really feel."

The most recently published book that continues this trend of showing humorless expression impaired English men was The sense of the Ending by Julian Barnes. “I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it,” Adrian declared.

Does this trend still persist? Is being an English man really so bad?

Daniel Martin by John Fowles

"Images are inherently fascistic because they overstamp the truth, however dim and blurred, of the real past experience; as if, faced with ruins, we must turn architects, not archaeologist.  The word is the most imprecise of signs.  Only a science-obsessed age could fail to comprehend that this is its great virtue, not its defect.  What I was trying to tell Jenny in Hollywood was that I would murder my past if I tried to evoke it on camera; and it is precisely because I can't really evoke it in words, can only hope to awaken some analogous experience in other memories and sensitivities, that it must be written."

Page 87  

All things considered I'm not sure this novel should work.  The ending result is far greater than the sum of the parts I can breakdown.  It's the lack of sense of direction that gives the novel both a leisurely feel and difficulty in expressing exactly what the book is about.  Daniel Martin is about identity, one man's place in the world, how he has come to be the person he is and, primarily, about the people and relationships he has shared that shaped his life.  

The title character is a very successful screenwriter who always feels he sold out when he stopped writing theatre and bought into the Hollywood way of life.  The impending death of a friend from cancer shatters the reality that Daniel has built for himself when he is called home to Oxford.  

It is upon Daniel's arrival in his native England that he begins to questions many things in his life.  Fowles never seeks to judge his characters; merely examines the multiple facets that govern how their lives have turned out the way they have.  Daniel reunites and reconciles with his terminal best friend Anthony and his wife Jane, whom he hasn't visited, nor had communication with for years.  The ugly past is recalled; the dirty laundry is cleaned and dried.  Anthony's death and a few recollections of the past show a unique intimacy shared by many of the main characters.  Jane, her sister Nell, Anthony, Nell's husband, and Daniel show how a group of friends, who all develop strong relationships with each other during their years at Oxford can come and go; in and out of each other's lives with varying degrees of significance: sometimes offering comfort and support, sometimes encouragement and laughter, other times marriage.  Fowles--in a very liberal definition of the word that I haven't seen used before--often times describes the intimacy of this group of friends as a type of incest: whatever happens between any of them is okay, excused and forgiven due to the fact that they all genuinely love each other, and yet it is because of the genuine feeling that they all share that certain things should be forbidden without having to say so.  

In coming home Daniel is quickly placed into a situation of forced intimacy with Caroline, his daughter who he has played a very small part in her life, and also with Nell, Caroline's mother, Daniel's ex-wife.  It is in getting to know Caroline better that Daniel gains some distance and objectivity in what he has left behind in Hollywood: Jenny McNeil, a young up-and-coming Scottish film star Caroline's age.  Daniel knows this relationship will never work and tries his best to break it off but he see how stubborn a young woman can be as he learns of Caroline's relationship with a B-list TV personality who is twice her age and her reluctance to give up on what she feels is right.

There is a simplicity to the story as much of what is told is nothing more than seeing Daniel go about day-to-day life, or as he says more than once, perhaps the life he should have been living.  While never disjunct the story does bounce around a lot between Daniel's past: near, recent and distant.  There are those who would say any deviation from chronological order is a bad, but the flashbacks are usually employed to highlight or further expound on some personality quark that one of the stubbornly intelligent characters clings to and refuses to relinquish; thus impeding all progress in their life. The vignettes that make up Daniel's past, some up to a hundred pages, often make up some of the most memorable reading of the book: such as Daniel growing up in the vicarage parish in the Church of England, or his relationship with 'two other sisters,' and in particular his first love.  Those are but a few of the lengthy passages that I could single out for re-reading on a lonely afternoon for a lovely way to pass time.  Another point of interest and source of constant reader involvement is figuring out who the narrater is.  Daniel's voice is a bit obvious, but I know Jenny wrote a few passages, Jane some others, the all-knowing third person narrater more still.  If someone definitively told me Anthony wrote any part of the book considering his heavy Christian convictions and highly academic, philosophical mind I'd have to re-access everything I thought I knew about Daniel Martin and read it again.  (And considering I've lived with this book for more than two months, I'm in no hurry to do that right now, though I can think of much worse fates in life than reading Fowles with regularity.)  

The book is a study on life, living, the world around us, the people who are important in our lives, and what we can do with the time given to us on Earth.  There is a lot of philosophy though it is dealt with enough of a light hand as to not need a reference guide to read the novel.  Daniel Martin perhaps builds to a vacation in Egypt with Daniel and Jane, it is proposed most innocently, and ends with the most dramatic of results--and not what you're thinking either.  The holiday shows a contrast and acceptance of the book's two most impossible characters and perhaps, if not acceptance the coming to terms with Daniel's most vicious philosophy: "To hell with cultural fashion; to hell with elitist guilt; to hell with existentialist nausea; and above all, to hell with the imagined that does not say, not only in, but behind the images, the real."  Which begs the questions when you've gone to hell with all the preceding, what exactly are you left with?

It's an extremely "English" novel, and Daniel has a bit of a funny crisis of conscious upon learning that he is in fact the most English of all Englishmen.  (More on the horrors of being English in a few days.)  In a nutshell, it could be said the book is about the differences in being American and English during the time of Daniel Martin's life.  I also feel that such a terse distillation of the book would undermine some of the more powerful, subtle and intimate aspects of the novel.  There is nothing difficult about reading Daniel Martin, but it is extremely complex.  At best guess this novel encompasses thirty years and the cast of characters involved is massive.  It's longer than War and Peace... and much like the latter wholly engrossing and worth your reading time.  As I said before, this is a book you live with for a while.  You won't always know where you're going, or for that matter where you currently are, but by the time you reach the final destination you'll be extremely happy you signed up for the ride.    

Adding to the list

I'm currently reading an anthology called Warriors edited by Gardner Dozios and George Martin.  There are some rather liberal takes on the theme but thus far the writing has been fairly consist in this mammoth collection with only one story leaving me questioning it's inclusion.  I've got five-hundred more pages of fiction left before I have any final thoughts on this collection, but in reading last night I reminded myself of a boring task that I always say I'm going to do every time I read a multi-author collection: I need to flag the authors whose works I really like so I can track down more of their stuff.

I kinda do this mentally, and while my current wish list for books is comically large I need to sit down and add to it further by going through the collections and I have and putting some authors names down for further investigation.

For instance, in reading Warriors I came across the name Joe Haldeman.  I've never heard of him but he has apparently been being awesome without my knowledge for a very long time, hence the need for me to chronicle my favorite writers from the collections I've read in the past.  When a collection such as Warriors crest the seven-hundred page mark even the stand-out stories and writers get a bit lost by the time the end is reached.  This is particularly true for me as I rarely read anthologies straight through to the end.  

It sounds like a boring exercise and in my case a bit of an unneeded one considering how much I have to read and how long my wish list already is but I'm gonna go through with doing it in hopes of remembering to check out some of those 'new to me authors' and not just relying on the old familiars.