For the yearners: The History of Love

When you love a book but not the author. Contains spoilers. Don't say I didn't warn you.

You should subscribe purely because I scrolled down a long time to get to this photo and it’s embarrassing because the caption is very much still ‘christian Nadia’

---

I was at Heathrow Airport in April 2017, waiting to board a flight to L.A., when I wandered into a bookshop to find something to read on the plane. I always read the first page before committing. Anyone else do that?

This one read:
“When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT.”
I let out a little laugh. And was immediately drawn in.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, after the first chapter, I realised I’d read this book before. Years earlier, in German. Because of the different language, I didn’t notice it right away. I don’t remember what happened to that edition. Clearly, it didn’t mean that much because I let it go of it when I moved countries.
But this time, something landed. Every word felt like it had been waiting for me to return. Warm. Tender. Funny. Like a letter addressed to a future version of me who would finally understand it.

The History of Love walks that beautiful line between tender joy and darkest devastation, with just enough humour to keep your lungs open. These are the stories I gravitate toward heavily. The stories that feel like life itself: Real. Messy, vivid, painful, fleeting. The ones that sit between “hahahaha” and “oh no,” where you laugh one moment and clutch your chest the next, felling a tug at your heart. Figuratively speaking of course.

The melancholy! The nostalgia! And I am, unapologetically, a walking flesh bag of both. I know people who avoid those feelings like they’re contagious. Well, clearly, I don’t.
Give me the ache. The beauty. The weight of something lost but remembered. Stories that leave you with a soft, lingering bittersweetness, they get me every time. Because that’s what life is, right? Not just great. Not just terrible. Always somewhere in between. Always the sum of everything.

One of my favourite things about this novel is how it captures a life not through sweeping drama, but through tiny, ordinary moments. Like bricks. Seemingly insignificant when isolated, but important when put together.
Individual stories that make a history.
The book is full of memories and lines that feel like photographs to me. I see them when I read it:

“Then I turned the page and at the top it said THINGS I MISS ABOUT M and there was a list of 15 things and the first was THE WAY HE HOLDS THINGS. I did not understand how you can miss the way somebody holds things.”

My heart smiled because I know how you can miss the way someone holds things.

“I danced the only way I knew how to dance: for life.”

My heart smiled because I dance like this too. Never drunk. Never tipsy. Just for life.

The Tango Argentino that I’ve been wanting to learn.

Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath, one of my favourite places in London.

This mention: “The Italian post takes so long: things get lost and lives are ruined forever.” (Truly)

The way Leo goes out every day to the shop, even if he doesn’t need anything, because he doesn’t want to die on a day when he is unseen.

I do the same.

I was born with a medical condition that’s been with me like a quiet drumbeat in the background. It’s made me hyper-aware that my life could end very suddenly and sooner than it should or could. I’ve always had the sense that I might not be here long. This feeling mixed with the fact that life in the last few years has felt lonelier than usual makes me feel the same: I hope I don’t die on a day I am unseen.

I see Leo.

His stubborn hope to be witnessed.

So many small markers from my own world are tucked inside the pages of this story. Sometimes it feels like a secret treasure written just for me.

Of course it isn’t. But I learned this the most from writing myself and observing people’s response to it:
We read ourselves into a story.
This is how we relate.

“Really, there isn’t much to say.
He was a great writer.
He fell in love.
It was his life.”

This is the ending of the History of Love.

Leo is the ultimate yearner: He loses Alma and never lets go. He doesn’t give himself the chance to imagine anything more. Doesn’t see how life keeps offering him other kinds of love. He builds his identity around what he’s lost, around Alma’s absence and never moves past it.

To his credit, he tries. And I love him for this.

He poses for a life drawing class (in the nude of course). He leaves the house. He spends quality time with his imaginary friend. He clings to writing even when he hates it. He jokes. He aches. As much as he has trapped himself inside his own life, he also makes an effort to feel alive.

I feel him! And also, all throughout the book, I want to reach through the page and shake him:
Speak! Come on, move man! Try something. Do something to move on. Anything!

Leo wants to be seen, but hides. He longs for love, but lives in its absence. He is the embodiment of a walking flesh bag of nostalgia, much like yours truly.

The History of Love became my favourite novel because it turns the small details into the architecture of a whole life. Because it understands how it feels to love something you’ve lost and to hate that you still do. Because it makes you ache, but in a way that reminds you you’re still alive.
Because it is so tender, laced with sadness and sparkling with joy.

(They made a movie of it, by the way. Surprisingly good.)

---

I can’t write about this beautiful book without mentioning the sad feelings around the author.
In the last couple of years I have been struggling to call it “my favourite book” any longer. I have faced the question of the author Nicole Krauss possibly being a Zionist. She is absent online, does not have social media and has done very few interviews, most of which are over a decade old. But after listening to the most recent one I have to assume her world view is one that upholds Zionism and therefore, not someone I want to further support with my money.
(I suggest if you want to read it, buy it second hand from a private seller)

Does this taint the book for me?
Hell yeah of course it does.
I am someone that has never been able to “separate the art from the artist.” Especially if the artist is still alive and could do better.
So here it is too: raw feelings about something I love, that might be lost.

If you have benefited from my work, consider supporting my writing by becoming a paying subscriber or sharing this piece with someone you think might enjoy reading it! Join me on Instagram / buy me a coconut hot chocolate ♥︎