The Reader

Rating:
Summary: A COMPLETE BORE!
Review: I kept reading, hoping it was going to get better but by the last page i was still hoping. It was a good storyline and had a lot of potential but just didn't go anywhere. I usually like Oprah's picks but this one was a real disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely boring and difficult to get through
Review: I usually find the Oprah books very interesting, but not this one. This was one of the most boring books I have read. I skimmed through it just so I could find out what happened to Hannah and Michael. I did not like the fact that Hannah referred to Michael as "kid". If the author did not specify Michael's name, we would have never known it until very late in the book. I don't give this a good rating at all.

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites!!!
Review: I don't know why so many people gave this book such a low rating. The language is simple (I can't belive that somebody complained about it being too simple!), and there were deep underlying themes to the novel. For those of you who thought the characters were not deep enough, I don't think the auther intended tham to be. He wasn't just talking about Micheal and Hannah, he was talking generally. I don't think it was Schlink's intent for the reader to focus soley on the two main characters. As for Hannah, one cannot understand the shame of illiteracy if one has not experienced it themselves. I don't understand Hannah's motives for her actions (or lack of them, I should say) or her reasons for her suicide. But for me, that did not take away from the meaning of the story. The plot was amazing and there were many profound statements in the novel. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to read.

Rating:
Summary: immoral and hurtful
Review: i have been following the book club for some time now and this is the fourth book i have read. i am ashamed to say every book has to have a certain portion of smut in it to keep us readers interested. this book i thought was just wrong though. i feel compassion for hannah and having a confusing misfortune but to take advantage of an innocent child is a sickness. i can not support a book that displays this context even if it is just for entertainment. i would feel devastated to learn another woman could do this to my child. it is sexual abuse. better books could be written by the author.

Rating:
Summary: could have dug so much deeper
Review: i've read all of the oprah books and this is the first one that i've been really disappointed by. as some other reviewers mention, the storyline is unique and intriguing. however, both the story and the characterizations lack so much depth that not only do i not care about the protagonist, i don't care how the story will end. if the book was much longer than it was, i probably would have put it down before finishing it. of course, if it was much longer, it may have contained the depth necessary to make it a great book.

Rating:
Summary: Elegant spare writing,eqivicable character development
Review: I liked the clean/spare writing style, the briefness of the book particularly juxtaposed with the moral dilemmas Schlink is trying to address- they could clearly fill tomes.Ultimately it is too spare. Who is Hannah? An abused child? A sadist? A woman of limited intelligence? A borderline personality? I never understood her choices.Any real insight into them was lost for me.

Rating:
Summary: A metaphor for involuntary love
Review: I enjoyed The Reader for many reasons that others may not have. It was, as the narrator points out, a metaphor for involuntary and voluntary love. We involuntarily love only our parents, Michael Berg says. Berg falls in love with, of all people, a concentration camp guard, woman he describes in one place as a horse. Despite the "juxtaposition of oversentivity and callousness" he feels when he thinks of her, and her almost overwhelming strength, she washes him and takes care of him and encourages him. The story unfolds of one generation falling in love, involuntarily, with another --- with one that is flawed. And yet, almost in a way Nabokovian (Lolita) and Dostoevkian (Crime and Punishment), there is redemption. Hanna, the concentration camp guard, learns to read in prison and discovers her crimes and her complicity. She does what mankind has done when confronted with its crimes --- she feels guilt. This book is about guilt and the ability of Germans (and all others) to accept the weaknesses of their parents without giving up that love. Ironically, it is the reverse of many books that explore the guilt of parents for the weaknesses of their children. I liked it.

Rating:
Summary: The Reader
Review: The reader tells us of the emotional struggle of one who has been torn between his love for a woman and the knowledge that she has committed an unspeakable wrong. It evoked a lot of compassion in me. I cared about Hanna and Michaelm they seemed real to me. I could not stop turning the pages. Hanna's mysteriousness and Michael's behavior during her absence drew me in. Both sad and sweet in the beginning, the reader is unprepared for the harshness of Hanna's trial. I liked the way that this novel took three very different paths, although I was dissapointed by the ending, which I though lacked the same amount of feeling as the rest of the novel.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting plot, but disappointing in the end
Review: I was instantly intrigued by a summary I read in the paper of this book. I finally purchased it and immediately began reading. It was slow at first and I only kept reading b/c I thought it would pick up - but it didn't. There really was no climax and the ending was depressing. I gave it 2 stars because it was a great plot, but it did not live up to my expectations.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book because you can
Review: The Reader is not a book about a relationship. Although a relationship is the central element in the plot, the main focus of the book is what the relationship causes. This focus is aided by the fact that the book is narrated by one of the two main characters in an autobiographical form. This gives Schlink the ability to cast the characters in a protagonistic light in the beginning of the book. The reader is thus encouraged to grow familiar with the characters before knowing the whole story. Because of this, if the reader is willing to have his/her opinions challenged they will be, which in my mind makes this book worth reading.