Rating: 
Summary: Thinly Veiled Nazi Sympathizing
Review: What if you fell in love with someone and later discovered that your lover had been a Nazi years ago. Would you still love her? Perhaps this is the idea behind Bernard Schlink's 1995 international bestseller The Reader. In The Reader, Schlink presents a story that is only shocking in its attempt at nazi sympathy. A sexual relationship between a willing 15-year old boy and an older woman is not news today or yesterday. What disturbs me is the basic premise of the story. Are we to feel sympathy for this woman simply because she's illiterate? Does her ignorance somehow lessen her crime? Does being illiterate explain her inhumanity, her ignorance of evil? Not guilty by reason of illiteracy? It's easy to believe that Hitler's ranks were filled with illiterates and miscreants. The idea that an illiterate woman kept the delicate, sickly girls from being gassed at Auschwitz to read to her (until she was through with them) isn't far-fetched. Disgusting, yes. Surprising, no. Hanna's illiteracy and her attempts to conceal it make her brutality no less inhumane; if anything, it makes her worse because she's as proud as she is cruel. She has no remorse about her actions. But she's prideful enough to hide what she finds shameful-not that she's a cold-blooded killer, but that she can't read. Outrageous. Schlink's language typifies the German stereotype-stark, austere, harsh. What's interesting is the philosophical questions he poses and his thought processes as he tries to think his way through a problem to the best conclusion. But what is "best" based on, other than man's own system of values? Isn't that what Hannah obeyed? In her case, it's generally agreed that those values were of a madman. When the protagonist wrestles with philosophical issues, he goes to his father, a philosopher by profession. He comes away with no insights and no answers. In the end, the story neatly concludes itself, and doesn't answer any moral questions. The Reader is thinly veiled nazi sympathy, and that is ultimately the most shocking thing about Schlink's novel. Schlink knew his case was indefensible; hence, the brevity of the novel. If there were some deeper point he was attempting to make, it must have gotten lost in translation.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must Read!
Review: This is a masterful work of art, and possibly one of my favorite books. Set amid the tumultuous times of post-war Germany, 15-year-old Michael Berg meets an older woman, Hanna. They begin a relationship that consumes the young boy, and profoundly influences his life. This relationship is interrupted when Hanna disappears. Michael only finds her again while he is a law student, and she is on trial for complicity in several of the Nazi crimes as a secret Nazi SS agent. This book shows an astounding amount of poise and insight, depicting the tremendous guilt and shame associated with the holocaust. The relationships between the perpetrators and the victims are discussed, along with Michael's personal guilt for loving a woman who was capable of committing such terrible crimes. This book is a quick read, and filled with incredible wisdom, and individual sentences that can stand alone as profound declarations that ring absolutely true. This is a great book, which acknowledges that the holocaust can never be truly rationalized, or comprehended, but only discussed as "truth". A fantastic piece of literature!
Rating:
Summary: moving and sad and thoughtful
Review: I loved this book. I urge you to read it. It lingers in the mind for weeks after reading it. There is something so sweet and hopeful and tragic about Michael. This is a great book!
Rating:
Summary: Loved it - Had to read it all in one go...
Review: My Mum advised me to read this book and I did, and was more than pleasantly surprised. What a masterpiece! I didn't know what it would be about, as I hadn't read any reviews at all. I didn't even know it would be a book about the Holocaust... but it is also a book about a complicated and tortured relationship between an adolescent and a mature woman. Her crimes are well-defined and as I read on I hated her more and more, not only for what she did during the War, but also for how she treated Michael. I couldn't really work out what his crime was, and why he thought he'd betrayed her, and why he was beating himself up so much. I think she made him totally neurotic. If my own son was underage and got into a relationship like that, I'd probably kill the woman. She basically destroyed him the way she destroyed so many other innocent people before him. I felt like crying for Michael, but I didn't feel one bit sorry for her and was glad when she had the wisdom to do what she did in the end.
Rating: 
Summary: Problematic but Thought-Provoking in Some Ways
Review: Once again, I read an "Oprah Pick" without realizing it until afterword. Anyway... this is a superficially simple novel that, for all its flaws, is worth spending a little time thinking about. The foremost thing to realize about it, is that it's main theme concerns postwar Germany's grappling with the legacy of the Holocaust. It's about those who were adults during the war, and the next generation. It's about how that younger generation (of which Schlink is certainly a member) reacted to the generation and individuals who participated in the Holocaust. Recounted in memoir form, the story begins with the tale of a 15-year-old boy and his sexual affair with a 36-year-old tram female tram conductor. The man tells of this time with a certain air of nostalgia that is somewhat understandable. And yet, if one thinks about the ages of the two people, it's also horrific. Make the boy a girl, and make the conductor a man, the psychological dynamic becomes rather clear. This is a problematic element in the novel, and one that is never dealt with in any way. Years after their affair had ended, the now young man discovers that his older lover was a concentration camp guard and was involved in an incident in which a number of prisoners were locked inside a burning church. The twist in the matter is that she fails to properly defend herself of the charges of being the ringleader in the incident because she is secretly illiterate. Clearly the author isn't trying to excuse her war crimes in any way, or imply that she's somehow not really at fault. In prison she learns to read and studies the Holocaust in great deal, and importantly, decides that there is no redemption or atonement available for what she did. But does the author mean this to apply to all Nazis? Or just those who fell into it? And what precisely does that mean? And, and important, but unexplored point, why does he chose to mention at the very beginning that she is Romanian, and never again? So, plenty to think about and discuss. I found the writing to be very precise and clean, an apparently excellent translation, although others' tastes may vary. Someone should translate and publish his crime novels.
Rating:
Summary: Finite, mortal, and brave.
Review: 'The Reader' is a short book, written in a simple style, which, paradoxically, deals with enormously complicated and nuanced issues. It's tempting to say that its strengths are also its weaknesses: brevity and clarity allow key concerns to be put vividly, however they limit a discussion around these concerns to the merely suggestive; the intelligence of the reader is never insulted, but, then again, too much might also be presumed.
*
The spare style of the prose has numerous effects, not all unequivocally positive. Certainly it makes for a clear exposition of the plot. It also gives the narrator a voice that is free of apparent irony, and so makes it initially hard to credit that he is keeping anything from us, or from himself. Yet this very clarity, with its superficial honesty, starts to feel like it's failing to communicate the complexity and messiness of the thoughts and emotions raised by the subject matter. Its cool distance can feel like pretence. Once pretence is suspected, then it's possible to ask whether the narrator is deliberately leaving out much that is pertinent, and whether his clarity actually curtails, rather than encourages, further thought about the difficult issues contained in the book.
*
To look at this another way, it is as if we are allowed access to only one of the voices inhabiting the mind of the narrator. The events depicted suggest a tremendous internal conflict within th narrator, a conflict that might be expected to generate a number of opposing voices, much like in one of Dostoevsky's protagonists. Instead, a fairly uniform, and oddly dispassionate, voice is presented to the world. This voice is very clear, and spare, and readable, but I'm not sure it's the most interesting, or insightful, or truthful way to illuminate the issues at the book's heart.
*
The clarity of the style extends from the word surface to the structure. This can be beguiling, in that where gaps in information exist, these gaps are readily visible, and we can engage in the imaginative task of filling them in. Who were Hanna Schmitz's parents? What were the details of Michael Berg's marriage and his subsequent affairs? What kind of relationship did he maintain with his child? These and many other questions might reflect upon the text, but Schlink provides answers which are, at best, suggestive, at worst, non-existent. Again, this is double-edged. The reader is shown respect, is not manipulated or told what to think, but perhaps insufficient guidance is provided for further thought to be successfully promoted. To be more personal - I felt I was being asked to, "Think about Germany's relationship with its Nazi past", but I was given the means to this only in the most broad and 'suggestive' of strokes.
*
If the key concern of the book is the relationship of one person, or one nation, has with a flawed and shameful past, then overall, 'The Reader' puts the questions squarely and clearly. It is also well aware that no one 'answer' exists to these questions. However, its strategy of leaving silence to speak of the complexity is flawed. The many answers, most incompatible and partial, that might have been offered to the reader are left unsaid. The undeniable courage of the narrative seems to stop short when more is needed, but that is not to belittle its considerable achievement in arriving at such a vantage.
Rating:
Summary: Disquieting, well-written novel
Review: Enjoyed THE READER by Bernhard Schlink. It is a disquieting novel about a fifteen-year old boy who, on his way home from school, falls ill . . . he is rescued by a woman twice his age . . . in time she becomes his lover--only to inexplicably disappear. When the boy next sees her, he is a young law student and
she is on trial for a hideous crime . . . the fact that she refuses to defend herself bothers him until he realizes the secret his former lover guards. The writing is superb . . . there were several memorable passages; among them: During the weeks of the trial, I felt nothing: my feelings were
numbed. Sometimes I poked at them, and imaged Hanna doing
what she was accused of doing as clearly as I could, and also
doing what the hair on her neck and the birthmark on her shoulder recalled to my mind. It was like a hand pinching an arm numbed by an injection. The arm doesn't register that it is being pinched by the hand, the hand registers that it is pinching the arm, and at first the mind cannot tell the two of them apart. But a moment later it distinguishes them quite clearly. Perhaps the hand has pinched so hard that the flesh stays white for a while. Then the blood flows back and the spot regains its color. But that does not bring back sensation. I tried to talk about the problem with friends. Imagine someone is racing intentionally towards his own destruction and you can save him-do you go ahead and save him? Imagine there's an operation, and the patient is a drug user and the drugs are incompatible with the anesthetic, but the patient is ashamed of being an addict and does not want to tell the anesthesiologist-do you talk to the anesthesiologist? Imagine a trial and a defendant who will be convicted if he doesn't admit to being left-handed-do you tell the judge what's going on? Imagine he's gay, and could not have committed the crime because he's gay, but is ashamed of being gay. It isn't a question of whether the defendant should be ashamed of being left-handed or gay-just imagine that he is. I tried to approach my later relationships better, and to get into them more deeply. I admitted to myself that a woman had to move and feel a bit like Hanna, smell and taste a bit like her for things to be good between us. I told them about Hanna. And I told them more about myself than I had told Gertrud; they had to be able to make sense of whatever they might find disconcerting in my behavior and moods. But the women didn't want to hear that much. I remember Helen, and American literary critic who stroked my back silently and soothingly as I talked, and continued to stroke me just as silently and soothingly after I'd stopped speaking. Gesina, a psychoanalyst, thought I needed to work through my relationship with my mother. Did it not strike me that my mother hardly appeared in my story at all? Hilke, a dentist, kept asking about the time before
we met, but immediately forgot whatever I told her. So I stopped talking about it. There's no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I thought this was a great book. It opened my mind to a new perspective on a very dark subject. I loved the way this author wrote I was compelled to read on as to learn what would happen to the characters.
Rating:
Summary: sophomoric
Review: For a book that gets as many positive comments as this one does, I had high hopes, which were quickly dashed. The writing is elementary, the characters poorly drawn. Melodramatic.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary
Review: An extraordinary story I couldn't put down. Schlink offers a view that is searing, original and unique. Granting the reader a vantage point that is unexpected and spellbinding.
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