Cheryl's Comments: I fell in love with Leo Gursky on the first page. He is a crotchety, lonely, holocaust survivor whose main goal in life is not to die on a day when no one sees him. To that end, he happily spills coffee on himself at Starbucks, annoys sales people at the shoe store, and drops things as he walks on the street. He is in some ways a tragic character, but his wry sense of humor kept me reading. It’s a good thing I loved Leo, because this book is not easy to read. The narration switches between several narrators and jumps across decades. Alma Singer, the other main narrator, is a 14 year old girl named after the main character in her parent’s favorite book: The History of Love. In addition to Leo and Alma’s narrations, there are also excerpts from The History of Love, the book that is really the main character of this novel. The story unravels as a mystery, with key bits of information given completely out of sequence, and as a result I often found myself lost but reading on anyway because of Leo and Alma. The ending was satisfying, and led me to immediately re-read the book in order to pick up all the little details I knew I had missed the first time. This is a very worthwhile read. Check Status at GPL
