It was a last minute decision to catch Nicole Krauss at Congregation Beth Elohim last night but I’m so glad I was there to hear her read a short excerpt from her new book, Great House (nominated for a National Book Award) and respond to questions from New York Times reporter,  Jodi Kantor.

In fact, I absolutely loved hearing their conversation about the new book even though I haven’t read it yet. Krauss is that intelligent, thoughtful and interesting about the art of writing (and Kantor asked great questions).

In some ways that hour at Beth Elohim, a part of their Bookapalooza festivities, was a master class in a style of literary fiction, that penetrates the inner lives of its characters and touches on major themes like trauma, remembrance, the legacy of the Holocaust, and what we pass on to our children.

Krauss is disarming with her gentle voice and down-to-earth manner. But make no mistake, she’s a literary force to be reckoned with and a real powerhouse when it comes to fiction that is at once challenging and relevant to people’s lives.

Years ago, I read a short story by Krauss in the New Yorker, in which she channeled the unforgettable voice of Leo Gursky, an elderly Jewish locksmith who immigrates to New York after escaping SS officers in Poland, I kept checking the by-line. Who wrote this? I said to myself. Saul Bellow? Philip Roth? Who is this young Nicole Krauss I wondered.

That short story became The History of Love and, well, the rest is history.

I also read her first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, about a man who loses his memory of 30 years of his life and has to create a new life. That novel is quite good but it didn’t prepare me for the virtuosic characterization of Leo Gursky in The History of Love.

Krauss said last night that she thinks of a novel like a great house with rooms and hallways and doors. It was a compelling image. “It’s where I feel most at home. In my writing,” she said simply.

My sister bought the book but we opted not to wait on the long line to get it signed by the author, who has two children and lives in Park Slope with her husband Jonathan Safran Foer. She told the audience that she wrote Great House soon after her son was born and wondered if she’d ever feel the ambition and motivation to write again.

The answer to this is, indeed, abundantly clear.

Photo by Colin O’Connor for National Post