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Summary: Good and evil have fuzzy edges in real life.
Review: Fifteen year-old Michael Berg contracts hepatitis and is helped home after vomiting in the street by Hanna Schmitz. She is beautiful and she seems to possess a strength of purpose that Michael lacks. Though Hanna is more than twice his age, Michael falls in love with her. The exquisite economy of author Berhard Schlink's style draws you in to the love affair between Michael and Hanna, framing all with the sight, sound, smell, taste and feel of life. Secrets both innocent and horrible abound in this book. Michael and Hanna meet years after their affair in a courtroom where Hanna is being tried for a terrible crime. You may think for a time to yourself, ah!, this is what I would, or wouldn't, have done. But as is true in life, and underscored in this marvelous book, good and evil have fuzzy edges. The Reader is a book of mirrors: horror and joy, compassion and cruelty, often intermingling. You won't avoid seeing yourself here. Words like atonement, epiphany, and forgiveness come to life in this book- and hope. The book is a classic to be read and studied for years to come. Carol Brown Janeway's translation is masterful.
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Summary: Formally haunting
Review: If you want to read a book that confronts you with real-life questions, "what would you do if you were there?" and yet so emotionally-involved that you don't know what to do, go and get 'The Reader' rightaway! I stayed quiet and stunned when I finished reading this book. In its simple, formal and almost cold lines, 'The Reader' managed to penetrated deep into my heart. This is not a weepy romantic pulp fiction but it would make you cry inside.
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Summary: Struggled through it, but it did have one interesting moment
Review: Boy, the first part was bad. All about this teenage boy'ssexual awakening in the most clichéd terms. But in the 2nd part of thebook, when Hannah is being tried for Nazi war crimes, she explains that they were all under Hitler's orders and they themselves would have been killed if the orders weren't carried out. Then she turns to the judge and asks the crucial question of the book, "What would you have done?" And he has no answer for her. I think the people who said this book was about how terrible the Holocaust was, or how hard it is to love someone who has done something terrible, or how a boy's first love is never forgotten, all missed the point.
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Summary: Unrelenting drama
Review: This is the best book I've read since The Triumph and the Glory. The quality of the writing is just superb. The characters so unrelentingly vivid they become as familiar as family. A very good book.
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Summary: Mesmerising and Thought-provoking!
Review: This book mesmerised me on several levels. Its spare and lucid language captured me in a dream. In that dream, a young man's emotional involvement with an older woman, colours the rest of his life. I think that this book is not only about secrets but the mystery of being and how events shape us and transfigure us in damaging ways. And this book is full of emotion, implied in a gesture, a word, a look- but what that emotion might be, no one seems to know. The author has captured the essence of emotion.The story raises the question of "what should one feel"? And, "how should one judge?" What would I have done given those circumstances, either Hannah's or Michael's? Hannah, in caring for Michael, simply continued doing what she had done in her unspeakable sojourn earlier on. She gave him what he needed, and seemed to ask for little in return. In effect, she nurtured the qualities in him that made him successful. There's a mutually redemptive quality to their relationship, that unfortunately, in the end, never reached its full potential. Not only the secret came between them, but far greater secrets- how we can become prisoners of our past. In the end, I wept for both of them. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves to think!
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Summary: Utterly disappointing
Review: I must say I've been disappointed with many of Oprah's picks lately, but this was the worst ever. Perhaps the original German version was good and the emotion was lost in the translation, but I found it flat, dull and dry. For such a great plot, it was incredibly boring. I didn't care about any of the characters, and being Jewish I expected at least the courtroom scenes to dredge up some feeling. But there was no clue as to the character's inner lives - it was like a good outline, or a painting in black and white with no color or depth. I kept hoping to understand Hanna's attraction to Michael or to feel something during the love/sex scenes or care when things went wrong. But the writing was so dead I really had no empathy for anyone and I ended up skimming the last quarter of the book just to find out the ending. It seems some people feel a good plotline makes a good book, but some of the best books I've read have had very little action. For me good writing is as much - no more - about the dance of language, the rhythm of a sentence and the poetry of the words chosen as the plot itself. And this book was like reading a factual report, the writing itself was soul-less.
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Summary: A HARD TO READ BOOK
Review: I found parts of this book iteresting to read but much of it boring as well. It was hard to go on at times... If you read this book, or want to read one that goes straight to your heart, read Stolen Moments by Barbara Jeanne Fisher. . .It is a beautiful story of unrequited love. . .for certain the love story of the nineties. I intended to give the book a quick read, but I got so caught up in the story that I couldn't put the book down. From the very beginning, I was fully caught up in the heart-wrenching account of Julie Hunter's battle with lupus and her growing love for Don Lipton. This love, in the face of Julie's impending death, makes for a story that covers the range of human emotions. The touches of humor are great, too, they add some nice contrast and lighten things a bit when emotions are running high. I've never read a book more deserving of being published. It has rare depth. Julie's story will remind your readers that life and love are precious and not to be taken for granted. It has had an impact on me, and for that I'm grateful. Stolen Moments is written with so much sensitivity that it made me want to cry. It is a spellbinder. What terrific writing. Barbara does have an exceptional gift!
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Summary: Boring
Review: Uhh..predictable and dull
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Summary: a new perspective to look at the Holocaust
Review: At the first part of "the Reader", I thought it was a male version of Lolita. But I found that I was totally wrong as I was kept reading. This piece of work gave me a whole new perspective to understand the Holocaust during the WW2. I've read and seen so many books and movies about the horrible massacre that I doubted there could be possibly anything new to me. BUT THERE ARE ! This novel is about the postwar Germans:two generations who could not help but hating and loving at the same time. This book is definitly worth reading and give so many things to think about.
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Summary: Courageous attempt to wrestle with a traumatic topic.
Review: The story, presented more or less convincingly, is a means of grappling with the larger questions of crime and punishment as they relate to people who personally experienced Germany's Hitler regime and to the postwar generation that tries to understand it retrospectively. The reader quickly finds that old assumptions regarding victims and perpetrators have to be questioned, at least suspended, to come to terms with that ever pressing question: "How could this happen?" Unwillingness to follow the author along this route will only leave the reader irritated, realizing perhaps that this unwillingness may be grounded in unacknowledged prejudice. Those who will follow the author may learn that some human conflicts are too traumatic to ever be resolved, but that love may overcome hate in trying to understand. Given the mostly singular perspective offered by today's media in the representation of World War II events, this is a refreshing book that should not be missed by anyone trying to fathom the more extreme diminsions of the human soul.
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