Great House

My reaction to this novel is significantly more lukewarm than I ever imagined it would be. There were times when I considered giving up this novel, but something about it kept me reading and I am glad I finished the novel. Overall, I found it to be uneven, with parts I loved and parts I didn't.

Great House is structured much like a collection of connected short stories, with several different narrators. Three of the narrators we return to twice throughout the course of the novel and two are only allowed one section. I think part of my own failure when it comes to this novel is where my expectations did not meet what I was given. I was not prepared for the sudden switches in narrator and did not connect with the narrators in the first three sections. Or, rather, as soon as I did connect with them the story switched. I was happy to return to most of the narrators in the second part, though of course it was my favorite narrator who we did not see again.

My struggle with this review is that there are truly sections of this novel that I adored, that I want to send out into the world to be loved by other readers. But at the same time, there are parts that I really didn't like, that I thought were overwritten and needed editing. This is a novel that I am so surprised that I didn't like that I almost feel like there is something wrong with me and not the novel itself. Surely, since so many people have loved it, I am reading it incorrectly.

So what was my problem with Great House? Why am I having such a hard time pinpointing what I did not like? I'm even having difficulty explaining what I did like. Well yes, I found the sections "Lies Told by Children" and the second part of "True Kindness" to be the strongest, but why? What sets those sections apart from the other ones?

Part of me thinks that Great House just isn't anything new or memorable. It has been a long time since I read The History of Love, and I have mostly forgotten the details, but it seems like Great House is simply a retelling of that story but instead of a missing manuscript we have a missing desk. Am I going to remember anything about the plot of Great House in a month? In a year? While there were whole pages of this novel that I would like to quote, as a whole it just did not add up for me.

This is a novel that I think I could potentially have an entirely different opinion of if I read it again. This was not the right time, which is not to absolve Great House of its flaws. I wish there had been more consistency. But I also think that those things would not have bothered me nearly as much any other day. I think that all of the other pages of success, all of the other quotes that were so beautiful, would have won. Want some examples?

An imposing wooden desk with nineteen drawers floats through this book like a buoy, and sometimes with shackles, loosely uniting four disparate but interconnected narrative threads. The desk is largely a monument to Jewish survival, loss, and recovery, and mirrors the dissolution, pain, and dire hope of each character. Additionally, it is a covetous object, given a poignant and existential significance by the chorus of voices that are bound to it by their memories.

"Bend a people around the shape of what they lost, and let everything mirror its absent form."

This elegiac story opens with Nadia, a now divorced and successful writer, who received the desk in 1972 from a Chilean poet, Daniel Varsky. Daniel needed a place to store furniture, and Nadia had an empty house. After a long night that resulted only in a brief kiss, he leaves her his desk, as well as other pieces of furniture, and returns to Chile and the tragic conditions of Pinochet's Junta regime. He never returns. Years later, during a particularly low period of her life, she receives a call from a woman, Leah Weisz, who alleges to be Varsky's daughter, and who has called to claim the desk. In the midst of this narrative, we occasionally break to Nadia confessing to an unknown "Your Honor." Nadia's attachment to the desk is profound and the loss of it signals keen despair.

Leah and her brother have lived a nomadic (yet insular) privileged life with their father, George, a mordant, esteemed antiques dealer who is legendary for his prowess in recovering any loss object. He is obsessed with scrupulously reconstructing his father's study, to make it the way it was before the Gestapo pillaged it during World War II. Odd as this may seem, this reassembling in relation to Jewish culture and history is sublime.

There is another Jewish family, a father with two sons, Dov and Uri, whose link to the desk is more obscure and is revealed in the latter part of the book. He plaintively details the loss of his wife, Eve, and confesses to the tenuous relationship with his sons. Its climactic section is the weakest and most strained of all. I suspect that Krauss used it as a more concrete connective device.

We also meet a grieving widower, Arthur, whose wife, Lotte, once in possession of the desk, died of Alzheimer's and left an elusive trail to a dark secret. Arthur warily and then desperately decides to investigate her past. The strands of Arthur's narrative lead to connections with other voices and a searing self-examination. Certainties are founded on shifting sand; a commanding desk holds many compartments.

The central denouement (there is more than one climactic scene) is the most moving and mystical of all the segments of the book, and for this reader, poetic and riveting. Its link to ancient Jewish culture is beautifully rendered and breathtaking. It makes sense of the entire book, as well as the title. I am tremendously indebted to Nicole Krauss for hypnotically transporting me to this summit of Judaic history.

Krauss is a cultivated and gifted prose writer; she edifies the reader with striking imagery while digging down to the boots of a person's soul. At times, she is long-winded, which nearly thwarts the pace of the story. And the peppering of Nadia's proclamations to "Your Honor" was a stylistic choice that didn't always work for me and felt self-conscious.

This non-linear and (architecturally) unorthodox story covers approximately sixty years, and is theme-driven; plot is secondary. The engagement is often cerebral, but also powerful and emotionally acute as the threads unravel. Additionally, what contents can lay for years in a locked compartment? What does a key open us to? There is much gravitas and many memories to unlock.

Some characters seem oblique, impinged upon by the relentless peal of confession, or lack distinction from each other. They run together, like spilled ink, (but sympathetically so). It may be what Krauss intended, because the characters' words, (and sometimes their absence) fluidly conjure that metaphor. Moreover, Krauss' delicacy of insight and reflective wisdom, like a haunting obituary, overcomes most obstacles, even a towering desk, and comes to a transcendent conclusion.

Highly recommended for all literary collections.

This review was based on a complementary copy I received from the publisher.

Mediocre drivel. The History of Love was fantastic, but this is crap. This novel is glaringly contemporary, and not in a good way. Krauss tries so hard to be cool by making all kinds of global references and having characters move all over the map - but geography isn't a substitute for content, plot, or characterization. She tries so hard to be deep by going on and on from the perspectives of various people, some more vulgar than others. She intends to titillate at times, in a cliche, somewhat offensive way, while at the same time maintaining the mild boringness (as though that makes everything more profound). Like so many novelists before her, she only had one good book in her. Since most people don't have any, she shouldn't feel bad, I suppose.

I bought GREAT HOUSE based on the jacket blurb, offered as the first paragraph of description on the the store site, copy which I feel was intentionally misleading.

The blurb makes it sound as if there are three separate stories, disconnected except for some link to be revealed.

Well, there are far more than three separate subplots -- at least five, by my count, and most with multiple subplots of their own -- and, once their link is revealed, these all are very much connected.

That link turns out to be The Holocaust and, in direct consequence, the status of 21st Century Jews.

Perhaps it is the passage of time, but there seem to be too many Holocaust stories these days, too many authors exploiting the horrific suffering of millions for professional and financial advancement.

If the jacket blurb had been more honest, I probably would bestow five stars on this novel. The praise it has garnered is well-deserved.

The prose of author Nicole Krauss is crystalline and each of these numerous tales is full-formed and fascinating. She provides numerous insights which are worth noting, worth remembering. GREAT HOUSE is an impressive work and Krauss an important story-teller.

Nonetheless, GREAT HOUSE is not the book that I thought that I was buying--and I'm still not sure to which house the title is alluding.

While I agree that it was often difficult to follow the characters, I did, at least, finish the book before attempting to comment on it. How can you write a review of a book to which you only made the effort of 40 pages?! However, I do have a question; If anyone who reads this review can answer it, I would really appreciate it...In the the store.com review of Great House as one of the Best Books of October, it states that Nadia wrote seven novels at the desk before "Daniel Varsky's daughter" comes to reclaim it; wasn't it really Leah Weisz who came to get the desk in NY for her father?

Great House is not a novel that necessarily lends itself to a straight up or down "I liked it" or "I didn't like it" kind of review. Some have labeled it as experimental, but I don't think I'd go that far; I've certainly read novels that seemed much more on the fringe of what's expected of a novel. Not having read any of Krauss' previous efforts, I didn't bring any expectations to the table beyond those created from having seen it listed on a "best books of 2010" list. Perhaps that's why I wasn't as disappointed as some others here. On the other hand, neither was I dazzled by it when considering its merits as a traditional novel. That puts me squarely in the middle somewhere.

Great House is a series of vignettes or character studies tied together by an object: a piece of furniture, a massive writing desk. This desk either appears in the lives of each character or influences their lives in some way. It sounds like an odd concept, but it makes more sense when you actually read it. The desk itself is not particularly important, it's simply a common thread that Krauss uses to somehow tie each of the otherwise loosely related chapters together. The desk features in a series of stories that take place in different decades and in different countries ranging from America to Chile, Great Britain and Israel.

The uniting themes of these individual stories are sorrow and regret. Each character tells a tale of woe, having each lost someone important in their lives. Each chapter is a study in self-examination and is heavy in tone and atmosphere. This is not a cheerful book. In fact, the overcast winter months are probably the best time to read this book. You may find yourself prone to the same kind of mournful navel gazing as the protagonists in Great House.

While some may be disappointed in the lack of a conventionally advancing plot, others may take enjoyment from Krauss' masterful prose which is often simply achingly beautiful. What's the benefit of lovely writing and emotion if it doesn't move a discernible plot forward? Well, that's for you to decide.

I am always looking for contemporary women writers for my classes. I am a great fan of Krauss's _The History of Love_, which I found to be rich in characterization, prose, and imagery. This novel, however, falls short of my expectations. I know it is woven with several voices, but they lack distinction and bleed into the drone of self-indulgent "suffering."
In addition to the monontonous navel-gazing of the narrators' voices, there is the disappointment that you will unravel the mystery of the desk. By the end of the novel, I felt short changed, travel weary, and even used; the narrating characters' successfully expel their cathartic monologues, but left me drained and without empathy for their (for the most part) contrived woes.

It has suddenly occurred to me that books that are heralded as award winning now must have a complex infrastructure, speak in many tongues(voices)'and make mince meat out of chronology. A simple novel, chronological, seems to be just another seascape.
Reading this novel is confusing and gives rise to the notion that if I were smarter or more focused I could have kept better track of the story. Well, I don't want to keep notes when I read a novel, I am plenty smart,
and the complex structure of this novel was very distracting and ate into the my enjoyment of it.

Haunting. It's the best and most accurate word I can think of to describe "Great House". Per Dictionary.com - as a verb, it means "to disturb or distress." As a noun, it means "remaining in the consciousness, not quickly forgotten." Both of these definitions prove true after reading Nicole Krauss's novel.

To be haunted is to have things happen to you that are unexplainable - outside of the realm of the everyday world. If someone asked me what "Great House" was about - I don't think I'd be able to give a straightforward plot synopsis. I was always just a bit lost, having characters and events hovering just outside my realm of understanding - feeling as if the truth was playing tricks on me and that if I just read a bit more carefully, I'd be able to bring things into view. Once I realized that I wouldn't be able to do so, I let the thoughts and the characters drift through me, and stopped thinking about from whence they came or how they related to the others in the book.

"We search for patterns, you see, only to find where the patterns break. And it's there, in that fissure, that we pitch our tents and wait."

The characters are linked, in this novel, by a desk. At least that's what I think. What I know is that they are linked by memories, of longing and regrets, of lives that ended too quickly and lives that weren't lived the way one had expected.

"But I hardly noticed the conversation that swelled around me, so absorbed was I by the expression I'd glimpsed the moment before the girl had buried her face in her mother's hair, which filled me with awe and also grief, and I knew then, Your Honor, that I would never be that to anyone, the one who in a single motion could rescue and bring peace."

There is a deep layer of grief in this book. These characters live, true, but many of them seem like they are living in the shadows of what should, what might have been.

"Look at him, she used to say, a man like any other, coming home laden with groceries. And yet in his soul, all the dreams, the sadness and joy, love and regret, all the bitter loss of the people he passes on the street fight for a place in his words."

Too, this is a book about words. About readers and writers, about the power of words written and spoken. About how lives are shaped by events experienced both firsthand and pulled from the page.

"I made a point of answering the question I received with some frequency from journalists, Do you think books can change people's lives? (which really meant, Do you actually think anything you write could mean anything to anyone?), with a little airtight though experiment in which I asked the interviewer to imagine the sort of person he might be if all of the literature he'd read in his life were somehow excised from his mind, his mind and soul, and as the journalist contemplated that nuclear winter I sat back with a self-satisfied smile, saved again from facing the truth."

I realize as I skim over these words, that I've given no indication as to who each character is, as to where in the plot they occur (or what the plot is at all, for that matter), and that seems fitting.

For while this book is haunting in that it is difficult to grasp, is disturbing...it is also certainly "not quickly forgotten". While I may not remember the plotline in a way I can describe it to a person plucking it from my bookshelf and asking "What's this about?" - I can remember the grace of the words and the feeling behind them. Visions such as these will haunt me:

"I clung to his waist, the wind caught his hair, we drove through the streets past the city's otherworldly residents I'd come to know well, the haredim in their dusty black coats and hats, the mothers loading their gaggle of children whose clothes trailed hundreds of loose threads as if the children had been ripped unfinished from the loom, the pack of Yeshiva boys who slammed pas at a stoplight squinting as if newly let out of a cave, the old man stooped over his walker with the Filipino girl clutching the baggy elbow of his sweater, pulling a loose piece of yarn that she wrapped around her hand, unraveling him until his last words would be pulled out of him like a knot, him and her and the Arab sweeping the gutter, all of then unaware that we who sailed past them were only an apparition, ghosts more out of time than they."

Pretty lines without a destination at all.
I finished the book because I needed to know what happened. In the end, I skimmed though as many pages of emotional angst as I could -- It wasn't moving the story along anyway. Worst of all, it is NEVR clear why Nadia is confessing to Dov. Or how Dov and his father could be connected to the desk. I am glad I borrowed the book from the library instead of buying it.

Frankly speaking, I found this book completely confusing in structure. The author does way too much skipping around in a disjointed manner..leaving the reader wondering who on earth she's talking about! It spoiled the reading experience for me! 'though I did find many redeeming points of interest and captivating characters midst the chaos.

Ms Krauss had some moments of beautiful writing and clarity throughout her work. Her original concept of a desk that was a "house" unto itself and that linked several people and families in their writing and angst, was a "great" one. It just was so scattered in presentation that it missed being a fantastic novel. I kept trying to find another, personal connection between all of the characters, and thought I had, only to wonder about that at the end. It felt as if I should re-read the novel before I would really get that full connection and understanding of the characters before I could claim complete understanding of the novel. I didn't want to reread it!

I'm very well-read, and I'm intelligent enough to know when a book doesn't quite hit the mark. Sadly, although the critics have touted "Great House" for its brilliance and esoteric singularity, I found it difficult and exasperating to read.

I also became mind-boggled and frustrated by the author's switching from ordinary prose and descriptive writing to a sort of James Joyceian stream-of-consiousness at a couple of points. Again, it was irritating and disrupted the reader's train of thought.

All in all, I would find it difficult to recommend this book to my friends or anyone. I gave it 4-stars only because when she hits it right, as I've said, Ms Krauss writes beautifully and with great heart, and gives life to her characters.

Frankly speaking, I found this book completely confusing in structure. The author does way too much skipping around in a disjointed manner..leaving the reader wondering who on earth she's talking about! It spoiled the reading experience for me! 'though I did find many redeeming points of interest and captivating characters midst the chaos.

Ms Krauss had some moments of beautiful writing and clarity throughout her work. Her original concept of a desk that was a "house" unto itself and that linked several people and families in their writing and angst, was a "great" one. It just was so scattered in presentation that it missed being a fantastic novel. I kept trying to find another, personal connection between all of the characters, and thought I had, only to wonder about that at the end. It felt as if I should re-read the novel before I would really get that full connection and understanding of the characters before I could claim complete understanding of the novel. I didn't want to reread it!

I'm very well-read, and I'm intelligent enough to know when a book doesn't quite hit the mark. Sadly, although the critics have touted "Great House" for its brilliance and esoteric singularity, I found it difficult and exasperating to read.

I also became mind-boggled and frustrated by the author's switching from ordinary prose and descriptive writing to a sort of James Joyceian stream-of-consiousness at a couple of points. Again, it was irritating and disrupted the reader's train of thought.

All in all, I would find it difficult to recommend this book to my friends or anyone. I gave it 4-stars only because when she hits it right, as I've said, Ms Krauss writes beautifully and with great heart, and gives life to her characters.

Considering how amazing and well-received The History of Love was, I found Krauss's highly anticipated follow-up mildly disappointing. The writing was incredibly pretentious and the style was often challenging. The four alternating stories were all told from different first person perspectives in they were incredibly introspective. A massive writing desk is what connects these narratives, but I felt there was a lack of cohesiveness. Nadia, who is defined by twenty-five years of writing on this desk, is so concerned with her own isolation that her self-loathing borders on arrogance. Aaron's commentary on his son is overtly mocking and critical, and there is a despondency that pervades Arthur's recollections of his wife Lotte. I was most captivated by the story of the Weisz family, the original owners of the desk, and their tragically skewed existence. I was really intrigued after the first half of the book and was excited about any revelations in the second half; however, I found it anti-climactic. I did find parts of Great House very eloquent, even enchanting, but the book as a whole didn't quite deliver. I finished it feeling like something was unresolved or incomplete.

This delicious novel which centers upon a mysterious desk and the people who have had possession of it over the years is a surprisingly delightful read. The ribbon that keeps these characters attached, that six degrees of separation, is a piece of furniture. It isn't often a book has an inanimate object as the central character. But Nicole Krauss makes that desk a STAR!

It started out intriguing through the first two characters. Then it started to drag with way too much pointless introspection. Since I virtually cannot stop reading a book that I've started, I plowed through it to the bitter end. I felt like I'd run a marathon - I was so freaking glad the thing was over even though it ended with barely a whimper. I will not be reading anything else of hers soon.

I love Nicole Krauss' writing. Her first book "Man Walks Into a Room" made me ask myself questions that stayed with me for years. Her second book "The History of Love" was even better an remains one of my all time favorites. That being said - I wanted to like her novel, however I couldn't be more disappointed.

In "The History of Love" Krauss had a gift for taking seemingly unrelated stories and creating an intertwining string-theory like universe to dazzling effect. This is completely absent from "Great House" which fails in its attempt at repeating success. There are so many basic writing 101 problems that I wonder where her editor was when she produced this.

The blurb stated that the book centers around the desk but it does no such thing because there is no center to the book. Krauss loses herself here badly, she does not finish any of the multiple storylines she begins, and her characters often have no interaction with each other, and when they do it's often irrelevant to the story. There is great confusion in reading "Great House" and the confusion is not the kind to which writers aspire their readers to concoct in order to answer the questions themselves, it is confusing because it comes across as uncharacteristically careless and lazy.

Krauss was distracted while writing this, and her distraction reflects like a mirror in "Great House". When I saw her speak about the book before it went into publication, she spoke of her past few years of living as an exhausted mother banging her head against her computer trying desperately to write something, and then being interrupted by her family. She worried that her distraction made itself into her novel and hoped that it would all come together in the end like it did in "The History of Love" (she writes linearly) but she did not accomplish this. In the end, "Great House" feels like a poor product from a tired, albeit potentially great, writer.

Trust the author, she will bring it all together as necessary.
Do not ask for differentiated narrators' voices; though all the stories are in the first person, they all are the author's own style, and le style est l'homme même.
And yet all the characters are made distinct and real.
She is incredibly young (among other things) to have done this. Don't worry, you will know why the first person, Nadia, keeps addressing "your Honor", and it's nothing cheap or obvious.
This is a book for real readers; I shall read it more than once. I might give my own age: 75+

As a reader, I prefer experimental literature that is anything but obvious or straightforward. I relish books that make me think, but this book really isn't that. At first I thought it might be, but in the end, It seems more like a handful of writing assignments, those that Krauss was at one time proud of and then more recently decided to tweak a bit and clump together in a book. Still, some sections are beautifully written. That is, those involving older men, told from their perspectives. On the other hand, the ones written from female perspectives are far less interesting... actually, barely tolerable. I wouldn't bother with this book if it wasn't for my book club.

Great House has some wonderful writing in it, but it's nowhere near as good as History of Love, which is one of the best books ever written. The characters all kind of blend in together and overall it's just not very memorable.

The prose and descriptive abilities of the author are wonderful. I still don't know what the book is about. Some of the characters have no flow. The book reminds me of famous art pieces that are all white or black and some critics rave at the feeling. This is a selection of my wife's book club and I am waiting for their evaluation. You really need a glossary and time line to follow what character flow there is. I am not smart enough to get the meaning or what the author tried to relay. Those glowing 4 and 5 star review people are in a different, probaly more enlightened, time zone then me.

Disappointingly boring! Although the stories of the different characters were interesting, it was hard to keep track of all of them and make the connections between them. I'm still baffled as to why Daniel is such a integral part of this book.

My book club was very excited to start reading this book. It sounded like a great idea following the history of a desk and all of the owners. What we found was a confusing,often boring description about a bunch of dysfunctional people who became obsessed with this desk.

The characters lacked development and it was hard to keep track of who was who. The people who read on a Kindle said that they couldn't go back and look up who the characters were. All in all, a waste of a choice (we do one book a month).

It's hard to believe that this book was nominated for an award.

With this book, Krauss proves she is a great American writer. Her prose is spectacular and intertwined stories are engrossing. In my opinion, this book echoes the prose in History of Love but offers something that earlier book was lacking: A good ending.

I adored THE HISTORY OF LOVE and eagerly awaited Krauss' next work. What a disappointment. The characters' voices were all too similar, making it difficult to tell them apart by that means. In addition, the writer seemed to do all she could to hide the names of the characters (we don't learn Nadia's name until page 27) making it hard to tell who was speaking and to whom. After a while, I didn't care because I didn't understand their relevance. There was no one to root for in this story and the female characters in particular were painted in a poor light.

The pedantic, overly intellectualized reviews of Nicole Krauss' work miss the point. Her language is amazing - poetic and evocative. Her images are beautifully created by her supple prose. She is a truly talented writer and this latest is spell-binding. Listen to your heart when you read her. You will be amply rewarded.

Dysfunctional family, relationships and people. Add some violence and/or depression with shrink, money troubles, certainly abandonment issues and ! Another American novel, movie, TV show ....or something for the evening "news".

I found this book torturous to read. It lacked fluidity and a plot. Krauss' strained symbolism and tenuous connections did not engage me at all and I resented the relentless self-pity. Pruned and clipped, this could have made a poignant short story but over 289 pages it became sentimental directionless waffle.

I, too, had high hopes for "Great House" with all the recent hype. It is not a novel that draws the reader in. The interplay of characters with detailed pschological ovservations is reminiscent of Henry James. One can admire the skill, but the novel has little appeal except for those that want to dwell in the world of nuance. Good for Nicole for producing intricate psychological novels at such an early age. But, as for me, I will seek other authors and novels.

I hated this book, but, felt compelled to read to the end hoping all would somehow become clear. It is frustrating reading and not knowing what is going on. It's all so crazy - psycho! And, in the end it left me angry for having stayed with it. Would not recommend it.

I loved The History of Love but, Great House, don't bother. It's one of those books you invest your precious time in hoping for a fulfilling outcome and at the end you just want to toss it across the room.