The Reader

Rating:
Summary: Written without emotionality, yet full of emotional tension.
Review: This story is beautifully written. Schlink has a gift of writing without emotional language, but the feeling he creates is powerful. It's as if the absence of sentimentality made me feel more clearly the moral conflict. I recommend this one for men...may give men a moral question to ponder, in the context of a romantic relationship.

Rating:
Summary: This is a controversial book that resonated in my mind.
Review: "The Reader" is written in a deceptively simple style, but it is not simplistic. The story of Hanna and Michael, in my mind, is a metaphor for the brutality that the Germans perpetrated on their victims. Hanna may have had excuses for her behavior (everyone does), but in the end what she did was very harmful to a young and impressionable boy. Why does the author segue from this odd relationship to a depiction of the horrors of the Holocaust? He is trying to force us to think about the moral choices that people make in situations that are not simple or clear cut. Is Hanna morally innocent in her relationship with Michael and in the way that she behaved in her former life? Should she be forgiven by Michael and by her other victims? Schlink raises these and other questions that make the reader uncomfortable and that force us to think about difficult issues. "The Reader" is intriguing and unnerving but it is also unforgettable.

Rating:
Summary: Schlink's novel perdictable and rarely 'tackles' the isssues
Review: I started reading 'the reader' with great enthusiam. I found that the writing style was clunky and overly simple. I had trubles reading and continuing to read the book because of this. I thought that Schlink asks many interesting and moraly devastating questions to the character's and to the readers but it never eally answers them. The book is very predictable and overly simple. Skip this one it's a waste of time.

Rating:
Summary: A solid work of literature, austere, disturbing and brief.
Review: The Reader was a cut above the yearly crop of books seeking to be more literary than the mass of junk novels. It dared to take on the unpleasant topics of a psychologically damaging child seduction, Germany's post-war attempt to live in the dark shadow of the Holocaust and the alienation of human beings in the midst of society. The writing is economical, wasting no words on idle observations. I found myself brought somewhat hesitantly into a cold, harsh world, with the two protagonists exhibiting no great degree of humanity and evoking no warm feelings from me. My sympathy was given grugingly and almost with an embarrassment in feeling it. The only redeeming character in the story is the daughter-survivor, but even she is protrayed in a somewhat standoffish, chilly manner. I felt that the author wrote from the perspective of the rather overly self-controlled, self-conscious Germanic culture, uncomfortable without permitting himself any deep or unpleasant emotions. No one cries for the victims in this story, but that fact alone goes a long way towards understanding the type of personalities that could perpetrate the greatest evil this world has ever experienced.

Rating:
Summary: The tale of young lust and an older woman's secret
Review: I thought the book started well, telling the story of the boy and his relationship with this German woman. Once the affair ended, the story was lost in what he experiences in law school and how he finds out what happened to the woman after he last saw her.They never talked again. It took forever to get to the point of the book and her secret.It was a good story that could've been exploited better in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Could not put it down
Review: I know this book was panned in Oprah's Book Club of the month. Mostly because of the age difference between the two characters. I did not necessarily approve of the relationship but I don't think this book was really about the two of them. It was more about the depths that a person would take to cover up the fact that they could not read. What the character did to cover this was horrible. We all have some secret we're ashamed of but I know I would not have gone so far to hide a shameful secret. It's been a long time that I have read a book that made me think. It's been over a week since I have read it and it's still fresh in my mind. I recommend this book to anyone who has an open mind and can overlook the relationship between the two characters. Read on and don't close your mind to something that may shock you or even discust you. I read this in one sitting. It's an easy read and very well written.

Rating:
Summary: Impressive
Review: Throughout the book, Michael talks about different images of Hanna that he can always recall (i.e. Hanna holding out a towel for him, Hanna biking, Hanna in his father's study, Hanna by the swimming pool, etc.). After finishing this novel, I found myself recalling the same images of Hanna and trying to make sense of her character. This was impossible to do, of course, because Schlink depicts his characters as so detached from each other that we can't make sense of who they are through their interactions. The numbness that Michael refers to in the second part of the novel is so poignant and relevant to out times as is his comment that tragedies sometimes become mere cliches that no longer interest people. Not so uplifting, but quite memorable.

Rating:
Summary: Slick Holocuast Denial - Antisemitism Not Mentioned
Review: Has nobody noticed that Bernard Schlink gets away with a very smooth trick in these pages - never once mentions antisemitism as a cause of the holocaust? Incredible.

Rating:
Summary: Good-but not for everyone
Review: The Reader was an interesting read. It was a bit short, but I don't think that the story could have been stretched out any further. It tackled important issues about life and love. However, if readers feel that they cannot overcome the concept of an adolescent being with a woman in her mid-thirties, perhaps they should stay away from this book. But hopefully, the age difference is not a deterrant for people because it is a well-written book.

Rating:
Summary: Distractingly simple
Review: I began reading this book in a kindof "captive audience" situation in which I had nothing else to do for a stretch of time. After an hour, I had already finished a 1/3 of the book. Now, I can't seem to force myself to pick it up again. The writing (perhaps due to the translation) is overly simple. And I don't mean "simple" in a poetic way. I mean "simple" in a childish way.

The premise itself sounds very promising, but I can't get past the writing style. Thinking it might be me, I gave the book to a friend, who also passed it back to me -- not caring if he finished it -- after getting only 1/3 of the way through.