THE HISTORY OF LOVE by Nicole Krauss

I'm always a little put off when a first-person narrator is the opposite sex from the author. Still, I managed to embrace Leo Gursky, a Holocaust survivor, and got a sense of his personality, thanks in part to his one- and two-word sentences, such as "And yet." Plus, the narrator's voice flips between Leo's and that of Alma Singer, a teenage girl who's into survival techniques. Alma is named for a character in the book The History of Love by Zvi Litvinoff, which her father, now deceased, gave to her mother. Now Alma's mother is translating the book from Spanish to English for a man named Jacob Marcus, whose identity remains a mystery until the end. The stories of Leo and Alma Singer start to become intertwined when we find that Leo had a girlfriend named Alma Mereminski in Poland, who preceded him in fleeing to the U.S. When he arrives here and tracks her down, he finds that she has married and borne Leo's son Isaac. At her request, Leo stays out of Isaac's life but follows his career as a successful writer. Krauss, however, does not dwell on the heartbreak of this situation but instead fast-forwards to Leo as an old retired locksmith. There's also Bird Singer, Alma's younger brother, who thinks he's possibly the Messiah and earns his nickname by trying to fly. The story is convoluted but in a good way. At the end, I wanted to wrap this book in a big, warm hug. Also, the fact that there's a minor character who is apparently imagined made me want to read it all over again.