The story of love
The story of love is the second novel by the American writer Nicole Krauss . It was published in 2005 and was published in German by Rowohlt Verlag in 2006 . The focus of the novel is a book manuscript entitled "The Story of Love", which the Polish Jew Leopold (Leo) Gursky wrote for his great love Alma Mereminski and which he wrongly believes has been lost. In parallel, Nicole Krauss tells several interwoven storylines that revolve around this manuscript. The film adaptation, directed by Radu Mihăileanu , was released in 2016 .
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The two central storylines revolve around Leopold Gursky on the one hand and Alma Singer, who was named after Alma in the "Book of Love", on the other. Krauss repeatedly jumps into narrative and time levels, so that the reviewer notes in time that the author makes it "often enough for the reader to be damned difficult [...] to keep track of things."
Leopold Gursky
About 70 years before the present, Leo Gursky, then ten years old, who lived in Poland, fell in love with his neighbor Alma Mereminski. The two begin a relationship that develops over the next ten years. During this time Leo wrote three books for Alma. Alma found the first book too realistic, the second too fantastic and therefore implausible, and the third was The Story of Love , which, however, was not finished before the 20-year-old Alma emigrated to America because of the National Socialists. At this point, Leo does not know that Alma is pregnant by him. After the German invasion of Poland, Leo lived underground and eventually fled to America, where he found Alma again. However, Alma assumed Leo died in the war and got married and has a second child with her husband. She doesn't give in to Leo's request to come with her, but informs him about his now 5-year-old son Isaac. Leo wishes to take an interest in his son's life but does not take any steps to get in touch with him.
In the present, Leo is a lonely old man who lives in New York and waits to die with his rediscovered childhood friend Bruno, who remains unclear as to whether he only exists in Leo's imagination. His great love Alma has died, and so does his son, who has become a famous writer. Obsessively trying to find out more about his son, to whom he had sent his own manuscript for a novel shortly before his death, he breaks into his house. Leo is also trying to get back the manuscript of the story of love that he gave to his friend Zvi Litvinoff, who had emigrated to Chile. He does not know that Litvinoff translated the book into Spanish and published it in small editions under his own name, assuming that Leo had been killed.
Alma Singer
Parallel to the story of the old man Leo Gursky, Krauss tells the story of the girl Alma Singer, who was named after Alma in the story of love . The chapters on Alma Singer are typographically clearly distinguishable from the others, as they are divided into short, numbered and titled sections.
Alma tries to overcome her father's death. Her mother is alone and distant and takes refuge in her job as a translator. Her younger brother seeks solace in religion, losing touch with reality and being called "Bird" because he jumped out of a window to fly.
One day, Alma's mother receives a letter from a man named Jacob Marcus asking her to translate the story of love from Spanish to English because he has an emotional bond with the book. Alma wants to set up her lonely mother with Jacob Marcus and goes in search of him. To do this, she also looks for the Alma Mereminski mentioned in the book. She finds out that she has died, but meets her son Isaac. As she reads his work, she realizes that the main character of one of his books is Jacob Marcus and she realizes that Isaac hired her mother to translate the story of love . After missing Isaac at home, she leaves him a message with her phone number on the door.
Enough
In the meantime, Bird reads his sister Alma's diary in which she records her reflections on the story of love . He also takes a phone call from Isaac's half-brother, actually directed to Alma, who found Alma's note and wanted to inform her that the author of the "Story of Love" is not Zvi Litvinoff, but Leo Gursky. Bird misinterpreted the diary entries and the phone call and assumed that he and Alma had different fathers and that Leo Gursky was Alma's real father. He decides to arrange a meeting between Alma and Leo and sends both of them a letter stating that the other wishes to meet.
The last pages of the novel describe the meeting between the two alternately from Leo's and Alma's perspective. Both are confused at first. Leo believes he is sitting across from "his" Alma and that he is just imagining it. Understanding that this is not the case, he tells Alma about Bruno and Isaac and Alma understands who Leo is: the original writer of the story of love . Alma asks him if he has ever loved a girl named Alma Mereminski. Leo is so touched by this that he doesn't manage to answer. Finally, he simply says "Alma" three times. The book ends with Gursky's necrology, which is also the last page of Litvinoff's version of the story of love .
Comparison with extremely loud and incredibly close
The Story of Love was published in the same year as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close , the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer , whom Krauss had recently married. Krauss and Foer dedicated the story of love or extremely loud and incredibly close to each other. What both books have in common is that they are each about a young person who goes on a search in New York. Both protagonists meet old men with memories of World War II. Both old men suffer from the deaths of long lost sons. The two stories also use similar and unusual literary techniques, particularly unusual typography.
filming
- 2016: The Story of Love - Director: Radu Mihăileanu
Web links
supporting documents
- ↑ Eva Manesse: Alma seeks happiness. In: The time. October 13, 2005.
- ^ Maslin: Books of the Times: The Story Of a Book Within A Book. In: The New York Times . April 25, 2005, accessed January 5, 2014 .