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    Great House
    Great House
    Great House
    Audiobook12 hours

    Great House

    Written by Nicole Krauss

    Narrated by Alma Cuervo, George Guidall, Robert Ian McKenzie and

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the internationally best-selling author of The History of Love comes this stunning novel. Great House follows the multiple owners of one writing desk and how the desk shapes their lives. A young novelist inherited the desk from a poet taken by Pinochet's police. Then the desk is stolen from her by the poet's supposed daughter. In its drawers, another man discovers a long-kept secret about his wife. And a Jerusalem antiques dealer uses the desk in his family's study, which was devastated by the Nazis in 1944.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 12, 2010
    ISBN9781449839765
    Great House
    Author

    Nicole Krauss

    Nicole Krauss is the author of the novels Forest Dark, Great House, The History of Love, and Man Walks Into a Room. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories, and her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. She is currently the inaugural writer-in-residence at Columbia University’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior Institute. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for Great House

    3.5/5

    571 ratings67 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This book revolves around a desk; parent/child relationships; and the trauma of the holocaust, and spans the globe; New York, London; Jerusalem; Chile. It asks the question about how humans can build relationships, when each member has secrets and trauma which can be hard, even impossible to share. No answers, but some vivid images of the main characters and their struggles. Definitely a book that I will be thinking about for a while.
    • 2/5
      This book is very similar to Krauss' first book, "The History of Love"; perspectives from young and old, both sexes, the Jewish world in the center and love, old and young, interspersed throughout decades.

      This one's like Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex", but not as focused, and definitely not as good, despite it being fair.

      Her tellings from an old man's perspective are crystal-clear. The muddiness is applied when she tells of the now, of the why's and lets me down in term of keeping the story fresh and the reader keen. At times I just wanted to press "next" and go forth to The Exciting.

      And there were a few exciting, fresh moments, but not that many. Maybe it's me being jaded, having just read Palahniuk's "Rant", but I don't suspect it. Time will tell.

      All in all: entertaining, a few choice paragraphs and insights, but for the most part a flower that has somewhat wilted. All it needed was fertile ground, dang it.
    • 3/5
      3.5 A slightly limp Bolaño novel whose protagonist is a desk. Occasionally beautiful, the multiple voices are a bit uneven and never quite connect. An ultimately unnecessary book about writing. Almost worth it for Lotte swimming.
    • 4/5
      Would give this three starts for spectacular writing and 1/2 for story.
    • 3/5
      As much as I liked a lot about this book, it just didn’t cohere in a way that I found satisfying. Books about how a single object or location tie people and situations together can be fascinating. Unseen connections are revealed to our joy and amazement. There was some of that here, but not enough. Plus I found a few of the narratives just plain baffling. Why was Nadia addressing a judge? What was with the angry old man and his disaffected son Dov? I just couldn’t see the connection there. I found that the way Weitz treats Leah reminded me of the way the father treats the daughter in Ng’s Everything I Never Told you. The expectation of a life from out of magazines and movies. Only seeing the dream, never the daughter. I wish their relationship had been better explained; why did Leah lock up the desk and tease her father with it? Like I said, not quite satisfying. The writing though, is pretty stellar -“It was as if the walls of his apartment were suddenly carpeted like the walls of a movie theater to keep the sound from getting out, or other sounds from getting in and inside that tank, Your Honor, in what light there was, we were both the audience and the picture.” p 11“I don’t know what that’s supposed to tell you; nothing, except that we take comfort in the symmetries we find in life because they suggest a design where there is none.” p 82And this amazing rush of expression - the desperation is palpable -“Suddenly I wanted to cry. Out of frustration and exhaustion and despair of ever really coming close to the center, the always-moving center of the woman I loved. I sat at the table staring into the greasy food and waited for the tears to come, even wishing them to come, so that I might unburden myself of something, because as things stood I felt so heavy and tired that I couldn't see any way to move. But they didn’t come, and so I continued to sit there hour after hour watching the unrelenting rain slosh against the glass, thinking of our life together, Lotte’s and mine, how everything in it was designed to give a sense of permanence, the chair against the wall that was there when we went to sleep and there again when we awoke, the little habits that quoted from the day before and predicted the day to come, though in truth it was all just an illusion, just as solid matter is an illusion, just as our bodies are an illusion, pretending to be one thing when really they are millions upon millions of atoms coming and going, some arriving while others are leaving us forever, as if each of us were only a great train station, only not even that since at least in a train station the stones and the tracks and the glass roof stay still while everything else rushes through it, no, it was worse than that, more like a giant empty field where every day a circus erected and dismantled itself, the whole thing from top to bottom, but never the same circus, so what hope did we really have of ever making sense of ourselves, let alone one another?” p 95“...But once I knew Yoav and Leah better I began to think of their talent, if one can call it that, as something borrowed from ghosts.” p 139It is interesting how the presence of the desk changes people and its absence seems to unhinge them. The whole presentation is a bit odd and disconnected, but each of the narratives is interesting and told in a distinct voice; something hard to pull off. Do read it, but don’t expect all the threads to come together neatly.
    • 2/5
      So many characters, all obsessed with an big ugly desk.
    • 3/5
      Wanted to love this more than I did. I wanted it to be a literary "Red Violin". Its structure was in part genius, but not genius enough for me to easily reconstruct the desk's history, and with a book like this, you kind of have to be able to do that. I don't think I'm such a dolt I wouldn't be able to figure it out, but it was weary-making that way. Near miss with gorgeous writing.
    • 3/5
      I adored The History of Love, but this one didn't work for me. Something about the writing--I thought all of the voices sounded similar, and I could never get into the characters. And the resolution was anticlimactic. Not a winner, in my opinion.
    • 1/5
      I agree with another reviewer in her surprise that this book won an award. While there is supposed to be a common thread running through the book, the desk, I found the writing to be disjointed, unrelated and completely boring. All of the characters were one-dimensional, unsympathetic and easy to leave.

      I have another book on my list by Krauss, and will read it, but if I have the same impression, it will be the last book by this author that I read.
    • 5/5
      Oh my goodness! The summer is going too fast. I've been trying to get lots of work done because we have a 2-week vacation planned at the end of summer, but it is cutting into my reading and LT time. I'm going to do some quick comments on my last three books, in an attempt to catch up. Book #40: [Great House] - [[Nicole Krauss]] - Finished June 25, 2015Category: off-the-shelfPages: 289Rating: 4.7This one has been on my shelf for a while, and I'm glad I finally picked it up. In it, Krauss tells several stories that are loosely connected by a writing desk. With links to World War II, the Spanish Civil War, and Pinochet's brutal regime in Chile, the desk connects people who have dealt with serious losses, yet continue searching for ways to make their lives whole. The writing is subtle and beautiful. This is a book that would benefit from a re-read at some point.
    • 4/5
      This book follows the lives of the owners of a particular desk. From the Nazis in the 1940’s to Pinochet in Chile to the present. Short engaging and moving interconnected stories by the author of The History of Love. Multiple narrators. National Book Award finalist.
    • 2/5
      Really disappointed. It was really hard to get into. I loved History of Love, though, so maybe it's worth reading again later on to get the full appreciation?
    • 3/5
      Several years ago I read [The History of Love], the second novel by Nicole Krauss, and was impressed enough to pick up this her third, even before it became a National Book Award finalist. Highly structured, the novel tells the stories of various people who all seem to have something to do with a certain desk. Each person's story is told in a distinctive voice, and the stories intertwine and merge until the reader at last sees the connections between them. Honestly I found this confusing until the end. For me, the more interesting aspect was the author's multifaceted approach to the subject of loneliness and alienation. How two people can live together without ever knowing each other, whether those people are husband and wife or parent and child,and whether it is possible to even truly know oneself. Especially if that person is a writer and in the habit of excluding the real world to create imaginary ones.The book opens ominously. In a section called "All Rise", a woman is addressing "your honor" and describing her past relationships, how she came in possession of a large desk, and what happened to the previous owner of the desk. But on the second page is a paragraph set off from the rest:She washed the blood from my hands and gave me a fresh T-shirt, maybe even her own. She thought I was your girlfriend or even your wife. No one has come for you yet. I won't leave your side. Talk to him.Obviously something has happened, but the reader is given no other hints.In the second section, titled "True Kindness", an angry father has an ongoing internal monologue about his relationship with his second son, someone he has never understood, and who has suddenly reappeared in his life.The third section, "Swimming Holes", is conversational, again from the first person perspective, this time the voice of a retired professor, whose wife is a reclusive writer. He talks of his inability to break past her reserve, despite their long and loving marriage, and how, by protecting her privacy, he may have been deceiving himself.The last section in the first half is "Lies Told by Children", and is told from the perspective of an outsider: a woman who has fallen in love with a man who lives with his sister in a big house and is completely cowed by his domineering father.Each of these stories is revisited in the second half, although not in the same order. By the end, the reader is allowed to see how the stories interconnect. But as I said, the plot was not the hook for me. I kept reading because of the language and the ideas about knowing oneself and others. The author is able to speak in the voices of different people very convincingly. But I finished the book several days ago, and I still don't know what to make of it, not even whether or not I liked it. The key to the book (which is in no way a spoiler) lies in the last few pages, when one of the characters refers to a Jewish story about the creation of the Talmud in a school referred to as the Great House...after the phrase in Books of Kings: He burned the house of God, the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; even every great house he burned with fire.Two thousand years have passed, my father used to tell me, and now every Jewish soul is built around the house that burned in that fire, so vast that we can, each one of us, only recall the tiniest fragment: a pattern on the wall, a knot in the wood of a door, a memory of how light fell across the floor. But if every Jewish memory were put together, every last holy fragment joined up again as one, the House would be built again, said Weisz, or rather a memory of the House so perfect that it would be, in essence, the original itself. Perhaps that is what they mean when they speak of the Messiah: a perfect assemblage of the infinite parts of the Jewish memory. In the next world, we will all dwell together in the memory of our memories. But that will not be for us, my father used to say. Not for you or me. We live, each of us, to preserve our fragment, in a state of perpetual regret and longing for a place we only know existed because we remember a keyhole, a tile, the way the threshold was worn under an open door. Or a desk.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful writing. Each portion of the interrelated stories could stand alone. Much loss, some humor and hard to make sense of the whole. Still, the language carried the day
    • 4/5
      Beautifully written, while full of sadness and loss. Not for those looking for a literal, chronological, orderly read. It is difficult at times, in every sense.
    • 2/5
      Great House by Nicole Krauss explores the human condition through the four lives touched by an ornate writing desk. While it's sold as a novel, it's really more like four interconnected literary short stories.I think here my rather less than enthusiastic reception to Krauss's book is due more to the medium than the message. I chose to listen to the audio — performed by four very well established narrators. While each reader did a fine job on his or her section — having four very different voices for each piece of the novel put too much emphasis on the short story aspect of the novel, and less on the connecting themes.Great House probably does better in print as a book that can be flipped through, with passages re-read as the writing desk's journey unfolds.
    • 5/5
      Love. I think I missed a few connections among characters but I loved it. The bit where Yoav's girlfriend explores Leclerq's house with the mysterious child reminded me of the surreal architecture and landscape of Ishiguro's Unconsoled. Love.
    • 4/5
      If you are looking for a light and simple story where there's a plot developed in the classic structure, this is not your book.This is a tough novel, it requires guessing and work on your part, it's like a puzzle that somehow the reader has to put together. And for me, what makes it a great reading, is that you are not conscious of getting close to solving that puzzle, but when you turn the last page everything makes sense in a strange and singular way, like remembering your own memories, through flashes and blurred images.Four seemingly unconnected stories in different times and places with only a "desk" in common, as if that desk is the only witness of the lives that cross its path, witness of sorrow, loneliness and loss. And, of course, of love. And as a lot of the characters that appear in the stories are writers or poets, I'd say this book also emanates love for literature and the art of composing in a very natural way.A glimpse of the stories: a fifty year old writer regretting her chosen loneliness remembers a one night stand with a Chilean poet who later is murdered by Pinochet Regime. An old lawyer recently widowed struggles to communicate with one of his sons, with whom he's always felt estranged but whom he loves and hates deeply at the same time. An old writer who takes care of his sick wife discovers secrets from her past he isn't ready to digest. Two atypical brothers with a strange bond struggle trying not to disappoint their distant father. The voices in the stories are poignant and evocative. I found myself rereading twice some paragraphs because of the beauty of some reflexions and a distinct force behind them. The writing style is sublime, the stories flow as in memories, there are no explicit facts or a lineal storyline, it's mostly feelings attached to past times which come like waves, they flow into your system and you finally forget it's a character talking, it could be your own conscience speaking.I also think this is not a book for everybody and that it can become frustrating not knowing where all this rambling is leading, but if you let your mind free of constraint, you'll experience life in its core. Because that's what this book is about: life. And as I have read in some other reviews I wouldn't qualify this novel as oppressing or pessimistic, I'd say it's realistic. Won't we all have to deal with loss and frustration and death some time in our ives? How will our minds process those feelings? You've got the answer in this book. It's your choice to get it.
    • 4/5
      A reclusive writer turns her back on friends and lovers to work at the imposing desk loaned to her by a Chilean poet who later disappears during the brutal Pinochet regime. Two siblings try their best to cope with the psychological scars imposed by their domineering father, a man who specializes in retrieving the personal effects of victims displaced by the Holocaust. A husband who has suffered through an unrequited love for his emotionally distant wife uncovers a heartbreaking secret as her mind starts to slip near the end of her life. Estranged from his youngest son for many years, a father makes a bitter, angry and ultimately futile attempt at reconciliation before he dies.What do these four plotlines, which represent the narrative force that underscores ‘Great House’, have in common? The desk, for one thing; it is both a physical presence that connects all of the stories—although one only tangentially—as well as a metaphor for the constant sense of loss that pervades the novel. They also feature protagonists who suffer life-long isolation—often self-imposed—from even the most basic forms of human kindness and spend a considerable amount of time trying to reconstruct memories of their past. (In fact, the “great house” of the title refers to Old Testament admonishment to rebuild the lost Temple of Jerusalem from the collective memory of the Jewish people.) I found this to be a very hard book to review, if for no other reason than it was not an altogether enjoyable book to read. Unlike her earlier novel ‘The History of Love’, in which Krauss covers very similar themes but with occasional touches of humor and joy, this work is wholly devoid of anything that might relieve the unrelenting emotional pain her characters experience. Further, while each story differs in its details, they share a soul-crushing melancholy that becomes a little monotonous by the end. Still, Kraus is a remarkably talented writer and this is a book full of compelling and hauntingly beautiful images that deliver a powerful final message. While reading this one was hardly a feel-good experience, it is also one that I suspect will stay with me for quite awhile.
    • 2/5
      Made it to page 180 before I abandoned this book. Everyone was just so miserable, that even had this been the absolute best writing in the world, it wouldn't have saved it for me. Even Pandora got a little bit of hope in the bottom of the chest of troubles. So far, Kraus has had one home run for me (The History of Love) one where the book got walked to first base, and this one, which struck out in 3. I think it's time to remove the "favorite author" tag.
    • 2/5
      Just could not get into this book......
    • 3/5
      The central -rather speechless - character of this novel is a desk. A giant desk. In the first chapter it arrives at the apartment of a New York novelist. Through the following chapters, or stories, we come to know of its past owners, its history, and its future. The desk is the connecting theme through the chapters/stories, that have their own protagonists, who seldom know each other. What I liked about this novel were the language used, the idea of a material object as a connecting thread and the structure of the story, that is far from chronological, and leaves much to the imagination of the reader. Still, strangely so, this novel has not made a lasting impression on me. Was it because the main characters were unsympathetic to me? (All of them!) Because there was only whining misery? I can't quite define what was the problem, but it seems to be one of those novel that quickly evaporates from my memory.
    • 4/5
      A weighty tale, beautifully written and — like the lives it describes — unresolved. The story follows the tale of a mammoth desk. In some it takes up space, in others it looms with importance. In still others its a prize, a toy, a chess piece. But in the end, the desk holds the same thing as the other large and unexplored elements that take up space in our lives — nothing. Only read this one when your ready to think deeply.
    • 4/5
      I loved the writing in this book, but i certainly was not able to understand many of the metaphors. i read that krauss stated that the mammoth, disappearing, loved desk represented literature, so i will try to see where that takes me. i feel this is an important book that always forced me to think.
    • 3/5
      A desk that is passed along is the center-piece of this engaging novel. "The Red Violin"-like. Wonderful writing.
    • 4/5
      Haunting, evocative but in some ways problematically opaque exploration of memory, trauma and loss, and the role which physical objects can play in these experiences.Perhaps like a previous reviewer, I was left uncertain as to whether the book -- memorable and moving -- at the same time constituted less than the sum of its parts, which if the case might be particularly appropriate to a novel dedicated to the subject of what is lost and missing, and the gaps and absences in people's lives. On the other hand, I personally was left feeling a little obtuse, as if, like the husband who narrates one strand of the novel, I too was left outside shivering and slightly blank outside a deep but unaccessed pool of content and secrets. This may well have been the intention, but at the same time did dilute the impact of an extraordinarily accomplished work, for me personally as a reader. Although engrossed and impressed at the time, Great House, over the following days, left less impression on me than I had expected. Nonetheless, a rich and extraordinary work.
    • 5/5
      Originally posted on Read Handed.The element of Great House by Nicole Krauss that struck me most was the structure. Krauss uses five narrators in the novel, alternating four of the five throughout, and bringing in the fifth at the very end. The narrators aren't all telling the same story and none knows the others, but the stories intertwine in subtle ways. Usually that happened by way of an old desk: the narrator owned it, or knew someone who owned it, or wanted to find it, or had it unknowingly change his life. The desk was enormous and "was made of dark wood and above the writing surface was a wall of drawers, drawers of totally impractical sizes, like the desk of a medieval sorcerer" (pg. 83).Krauss does not make any of the connections for us. The links between the very different narrators are subtle and require a keen reading to root out. I got many of them, but I don't think all. I love when authors have enough faith in and respect for their readers to put down the spoon and let us feed ourselves.The first narrator in the book ("Your Honor") is possibly the most complex. She is a middle-aged, divorced writer who for years has been caretaker to an old and massive desk. A friend of a friend, Daniel Varsky, entrusts it to her in the 1970s when he leaves New York to return to his native Chile, where he is later taken by Manuel Contreras' secret police. She tells her story in the second person, seemingly addressing a patient, just called "Your Honor", badly injured in the hospital. We have no idea who he is or what type of relation he might have to our narrator. For him, she chronicles her story of divorce, mental illness, and emotional attachment to a piece of furniture she never thought of as her own, but that still broke her heart to give away when a young woman claiming to be Varsky's daughter shows up for it.The second narrator ("True Kindness"), an older man in Israel with two grown sons, also speaks in the second person, but in this case, we know who we are supposed to be. He speaks to his younger son, Dovik, with whom he has never been close and could never understand. When his wife dies, he discovers that Dovik has abruptly quit his high profile job in London. Dovik moves back in with his father, who tries to finally connect with him before it's too late.The third narrator ("Swimming Holes") is a retired professor living in London caring for his mysterious and ailing wife. When she dies, he discovers a secret she has kept hidden from him for 50 years and tries to reconcile the woman he knew and loved with a new picture of her that emerges.The fourth narrator ("Lies Told by Children") is a woman recounting her experiences in graduate school with a strange family. She dates Yoav, the son, who lives in a large house with his sister, Leah. Their father, an antiques dealer, travels around but lives mostly in Israel. Mr. Weisz is trying to recreate his father's study with exactly the furniture it contained before the Gestapo arrested his parents and sold their possessions. The elusive piece is a large desk with many drawers.The last narrator comes in only at the very end of the novel. To avoid spoilers, I won't say too much else about him.Krauss gives each narrator a recurring heading to delineate who is speaking in each chapter, but the headings are hardly necessary. Each narrator has such a distinct voice and circumstance that it would be almost impossible to confuse one with another.The writing is fantastic. I underlined many, many passages that stood out to me, either for the message they communicated, or the beauty of the syntax. Here are some examples: "She had a limp, water on the knee, I think, a cup of the Danube that sloshed around as she thumped from room to room with her mop and feather duster, sighing as if freshly reminded of a disappointment" (pg. 111). "Something in me naturally migrated away from the fray, preferring the deliberate meaningfulness of fiction to accidental and unaccounted-for reality; preferring a shapeless freedom to the robust work of interacting that demanded having to yoke my thoughts to the logic and flow of another's" (pg. 43). "But the lesson didn't come easily to you, and you never accepted it in the end. You shot yourself in the foot, and then you spent years trying to account for the pain" (pg. 56). "Not that she expected me to understand. More than anyone I've known, Lotte was content to live in a perennial state of misunderstanding" (pg. 85). "The only exception was books, which I acquired freely, because I never really felt they belonged to me. Because of this, I never felt compelled to finish those I didn't like, or even a pressure to like them at all. But a certain lack of responsibility also left me free to be affected. When at last I came across the right book the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn't control what came through it" (pg. 127).In all, Great House was excellent. It took me a few pages to get into it and adjust to the narration (as I mentioned, the narrator of the first chapter is the most complex and therefore the most challenging), but once I did, I was engaged and mesmerized by the writing and the stories.
    • 5/5
      Great House is now the second book by Nicole Krauss that I’ve read, having previously read The History of Love. I continue to be impressed by this author’s writing. In Great House, Nicole Kraus explores many ideas in labyrinthine and mysterious ways through beautifully crafted individual stories woven into a greater whole. The thread which we know will connect these stories is a multi-drawered antique desk, believed to have once been owned by Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. We also figure out that the individual stories will have some connection with one another so we read with careful eye to catch whatever those links might be. Not only is this novel superbly plotted, but also the writing is gorgeous.Novels that take a bit of work such as this one often have me complaining. This book, however, did not leave me time to do so as I was completely captivated page after page. Having lived in Israel in the 1970’s, I knew the Jerusalem of that time. I also was well aware of the concurrent turbulence in Chile and the protests of young Jewish South Americans. I could have jumped into this book and befriended its characters. I also know what it feels like to be older and look back at that time. You could say I lived this story. The only thing that was missing is that, while living in Israel, I did not have that wonderful desk! There is one part of the story that had me laughing out loud (although there is no humor per se in the story). I was listening to an audio version of this novel, and found that there were a few lines in Hebrew. The lines were supposed to have been said in a European-accented Hebrew. The accent was *distinctly* American! I had to replay those lines a few times just for the laughs. I’m thoroughly glad that the author was rewarded with an Orange Prize nomination, a well-deserved kudo for this wonderful book. For sure, I’ll be greatly anticipating future novels by this talented writer.
    • 4/5
      "...Every Jewish soul is built around a house that burned in that fire, so vast that we can, each one of us, only recall the tiniest fragment: a pattern on the wall, a knot in the wood of a door, a memory of how light fell across the floor. But if every Jewish memory were put together, every last holy fragment joined up again as one, the House would be built again..." (page 279)Great House isn't about a house per se. Rather, it's the story of  people with a deep and tormented history - who individually represent a sliver of their collective past, but together, form a congruous whole. In this story, a desk is the connecting theme - an assuming piece of furniture that began in the office of a Jewish man in Budapest and made its way around the world, touching and affecting the lives of many people.In this story, we meet a writer who lives in New York, an antiques dealer and his family from Jerusalem, a retired prosecutor and his son from Israel and a British couple. With one exception, the desk spends time with each person - often carrying good luck but painful memories too. As the story progressed, you follow the journey of the desk and the people who sat at it. In time, you see the other connections between each one.Nicole Krauss is a gifted storyteller who is not afraid to take her readers on a journey that can be complicated and arduous. Indeed, Great House is not the easiest book to read with its swirling storylines and flowery language. It requires concentration as you learn about these characters whose lives are separate but connected. Each story could stand alone, but when placed together, they evoke a deeper meaning.Great House will probably be revered by fans of literary fiction. It would make a compelling book for discussion, especially if led by the right moderator. In the end, I am glad I took the time to read this book - and sure that I will be thinking about this story for a long time.
    • 5/5
      This book was complicated, in a good way. Like life, the intricacies of the characters required a good deal of reflection, and still, I think, do not yield the totality of their being. The author had a way of casually introducing some slight insight that often shocked me with the simple force of its reality. Perhaps most surprisingly, however, I find myself already longing to read it again. Though I sense the futility of trying to ever fully understand it, I feel like something more is waiting to be discovered within it.