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Summary: A Tale of Emotional Desire and Moral Horror
Review: A haunting and exquisite tale that tackles the deepest of moral dilemas: Who is more flawed? The one who does wrong or the one who, through inaction, allows the wrong to occur? This question is dealt with on the blackest of historical canvases -- the aftermath of WWII in Germany. We take the journey with a sensitive young man trapped between his emotional desire and his moral horror. The erotic scenes possess a consuming quality which gives a fullness to the moral descent of the book. A careful read.
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Summary: fabulous
Review: Great descriptions. Resonated deeply with my own life. Great story.This wasn't so much a book about war, or jews, or germans, but about the human condition. Why do we do things we know are wrong? How do we live with the concequences afterward?
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Summary: Old vs New in the land of Schnitzel
Review: I actually just got done with the German version of the book--I'm studying for Ph.D. in German right now--but I like it enough to get my wife an English language version, and some basic comparisons show that the translator stayed close to the original. I'm Jewish, so I get the question a lot asking me how I feel about learning the language of a people that worked pretty damned hard to get rid of my people. I usually say that it's a generational thing, that today's German's just aren't the same as their father's germans, any more than we Americans were the ones who held slaves. It's a different mindset, a different Weltanschauung. Someday our descendants may wonder how we living today ever enslaved sensitive, feeling beings... our pets! Who knows. Michael and Hanna stand on opposite cusps of the Teutonic generations; she did what she did not because of her special issues, but because she is, unapologetically, who she is and was during the Nazi times. I saw her as emblematic of the old; Michael is painfully young, then painfully desensitized as he grows, but he still couldn't do what she did. Thank god. World Wars aren't fun.
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Summary: This one needs to be told
Review: This is a deceptive story which leaves echoes, questions, perhaps doubt in one's mind long after the last page is turned. The style of translation slides along so well that it is hard to remember that it is from the German original. I wanted to have more, yet had there been more, it would have ruined that which we were priviledged to share.
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Summary: Reading aloud adds another dimension.
Review: I read the first 50 pages to myself. Then, I started over, rereading Michael Berg's words to my husband. The process of reading out loud pulled the words off the pages. We became actors experiencing anothers' lives. The story is not resolved, but neither is life. This is a powerful book and it's mood will resonant within me for quite a while.
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Summary: A judge of human behavior
Review: Bernhard Schlink is a lawyer and a practicing judge but he also is a man who knows the intricacy of human nature and behavior.The book can be divided in two parts and te firt could be a short story by itself. It is a boy's dream which is over when the object of his love suddenly dissapear. In the second part we find that Hanna had two secrets and we realized how a person can be good and bad at the same time and how an uneducated person can love good literaturae and appreciatte Tolstoy.There are some literary references such as Emilia Galotti that I would like to investigate. An excellent book , well written and full of psychological insight.
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Summary: A powerful and thought-provoking novel
Review: This is an excellent novel. It ranks (for me) with some of my other favorties: Musil's The Man Without Qualities, Underworld, and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, as well as (given the topic) some of the finest writing by Ozick, Primo Levi, and Philip Roth.
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Summary: A needed reminder of how "numb" a society can become
Review: I have probably been exposed to about the same level of information about the holocaust as other readers of this book, including Elie Wiesel's books, Hollywood's take, Diary of Anne Frank, and a trip to see Dachau. I have heard about the "numbness" that allows a society to look the other way during the committing of atrocities and also about the "numbness" that overcomes the participants and allows them to go about their "work". This book does an excellent job in describing and emoting that numbness of the Germans. I was disappointed in the character development of the book. I did not get a sense of any real personal growth from either of the characters; other than the oft used learning to read in jail motif. I was extremely disappointed in the narrator's lack of development; maybe that is part of the numbness... I enjoyed the read and am thankful for the reiteration of the holocaust experience. This horror should never be forgotten.
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Summary: Moral issue is smaller and bigger than it appears
Review: Schlink's prose is sparse yet evocative. There are just enough (and not too many) details to allow us to imagine the scenes. The major moral question, which re-occurs in each section, is "What would you have done?" That ever-present, hovering, issue is smaller and larger than it first appears. It is smaller because it could be said to apply only to those characters under the novel's novel circumstances. It is also a small issue when we think of the horrendous immoral behavior done to the Jewish vistims. It is larger, because the issue really applies to each and every one, all, of the German people, in effect showing what each did or did not do as effector or seeming bystander.
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Summary: a love story woven around crimes and issues of the Holocost
Review: This novel uses a unique love story to remind the reader not only of the horrows but the legal issues of the Holocost. Suberbly crafted and excellent read
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