The muddled, befuddled, and downright confusing history of love

*SPOILER ALERT - if you went to Saint Mary's and are still reading The History of Love...stop reading.

The topic? Unrequited love.

The question? How long do you hold on?

If you listen to Jane Austin's Persuasion, women love longest when all hope is gone. However, one of the male characters in the One Book One Saint Mary's selection (The History of Love) is trying to prove that some men should share this sad title.

The History of Love is also about the art of writing and life. And it is filled with beautifully tragic words like: "When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely."

But then love walks in: "Maybe the first time you saw her...Part of you thought: Please don't look at me. If you don't, I can still turn away. And part of you thought: Look at me."

And then love walks out: "For a long time, it [your heart] remained hollow...If it weren't for her, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it."

And then there was this immensely sad part that wasn't even about love at all. It was about getting older. This man would purposely go out in public and make a ruckus (aka spilling milk at the coffee shop or knocking down a KY display at the grocery store) just so that people would notice him. Why? So that he wouldn't have to die on a day when no one noticed him.

...

But then, I got to the end, and it was like I was watching The Sixth Sense all over again. Because I said: huh? Wait a minute. That other guy doesn't exist? This isn't amateur hour. I'm basically a professional reader. So when I get to the end of a book and 1. am confused about who ACTUALLY wrote the book that the ENTIRE book is about and 2. didn't realize the guy has a heart attack in the last sentences (thanks for clearing that up Wikipedia)...I must call shenanigans and say that some clarifying sentences needed to be strategically placed in between the poetic ones.

I ask: why make a book confusing on purpose when the foundational story is great? You don't need all the pomp and circumstance.

I will show this by providing a short synopsis:

In The History of Love that is about a book named The History of Love, there is a first guy who wrote the book about a girl he loved and basically has dedicated his life to unrequited love, but he gave it to another guy - I'm still not sure why - but I think it has something to do with WWII and the other guy published the book under his name to get a woman to love him, but he put the first guy's self-written obituary as the last chapter like a 'sorry'. And the first guy goes his whole adult life not knowing that his great work has been published. In other news, the first guy has a friend - who turns out to be imaginary - who also used to love the girl - which is why their friendship ended - and who is also a writer and he also might simply be another version of the first guy but this is complicated by the fact that he really did used to be a guy who loved the girl and subsequently died - I think - and I thought for a minute that the first guy stole the book from the imaginary guy but turns out I don't think so and the first guy gets his book back - secretly in the mail - and the entire thing ends with him dying on a park bench next to a girl who was named after the girl in the book because her father gave the book to her mother and it turns out the mother is the one who is translating it into English for a man who turns out to be the first guy's son who the first guy thought never knew he was his father since he had to let another man raise him because the love of his life thought he was dead and gave up on him.

See? NOT NECESSARY.

"Once upon a time there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered and everything was possible."
Nicole Krauss