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Title: Labor of Love
Review: Nicole Krauss' The History of Love is ingenious and precocious -- ingenious for its plotting, precocious for its fluent, page-turning style. But it hardly shows much to us beyond its own spectacular surface. And this is odd and disappointing, because it appears to be structured to allow a glimpse into something deep and mysterious. That is, this isn't a novel of character development; if anything, the characters are fully formed by the time Krauss gets to them, and they are used to spin the plotty tale. There is poignancy in the stories, and Krauss should be credited for not leading us to a too easy epiphany at the end. But ultimately, sentiment gives way to sentimenality. Hoping to illuminate the sinuous paths of love and affection, Krauss reverts to a winking knowingness. I concur with James Woods who, writing in The London Review of Books, says this novel infantilizes its readers. One feels manipulated by the entire mechanism -- a fully achieved writerly machine.
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