The History of Love...finished.

I finally finished the book. Amazing book all in all. It was confusing with the different narrators. But that's what made it funny and sad. I think Leopold Gursky's life was the saddest because he found out things a little to late. Alma kind of gained the most knowledge of things. Litvinoff wanted to impress those around him. Bird just wanted to be acknowledged.

The characters that were the most alike was Leopold and Bird. They both wanted attention. Even though after a while Leo didn't make a big thing everywhere he went. I think the main reason that Bird acted the way he did was because he felt ignored. His mother was going through a tough time in life. His sister wasn't exactly there for him. Leo thought that everywhere he went he should be noticed. He wanted people to know if he died. When I finished the book there was this kind of obituary for Leopold and I wondered if he actually is a real person.

One quote in the book that would probably have been chosen as top ten. The top ten in being of relation to coming of age. I found it on page 155. "There were other refugees around him experiencing the same fears and helplessness, but Litvinoff didn't find any comfort in this because there are two types of people in the world:those who prefer to be sad among others,and those who prefer to be sad alone. " I thought that this had to do with coming of age because sometimes when your sad you want people to comfort you and you want them to feel what you feel. When you're sad and you want to be alone you feel like no one could ever feel what you feel. This relates to Litvinoff because he went through troubling times. Him and Leo were best friends but he plagiarized Leo's book.

Alma searched all over to find the author of this book that her mother loved. She went from innocence to experience. I think this because she didn't at first know what she was doing but as everything fell into place she found out a lot. She realized the true meaning of her name. She accepted it as it was. Some kids growing up they hate their name but when they find the true meaning they learn to accept it. Most kids would have the meaning of their name given to them. Alma searched for something completely irrelevant and found out something else that was valuable to her.

Another quote I thought related to coming of age was found on page 251. "And then I realized that I'd been searching for the wrong person. " There was a scenario similar to this in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Both of the main characters were searching for something. When they did in fact find it they were disappointed. It wasn't exactly what they expected. When Alma met up with the author of the book she thought she was searching for the wrong person. Se probably felt like she wasted her time. But in doing that she also gained some knowledge about herself.