The Reader

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Summary: A revised reading of relationships
Review: The topic of the Holocaust is raised almost every day in some manner. Many books have been written about the topic. Whether in studies, documentaries or fictional accounts, finger-pointing at the perpetrators of the crimes against millions has been part of the process of coming to terms with the Nazi atrocities. For Imre Kertesz, renowned author and Nobel laureate of 2002, there is no other topic. Yet, when he reflects on the traumatic impact of Auschwitz, "he dwells on the vitality and creativity of those living today" and "thus, paradoxically, not on the past but the future." Bernhard Schlink, professor of law and practicing judge in Germany, born in 1944, has attempted to capture the struggles of his generation in confronting the past and the future in "The Reader". "Pointing at the guilty party did not free us from shame", his narrator and protagonist contemplates, "but at least it overcame the suffering we went through on account of it".

The usually unambiguous distinction between villain and victim has facilitated the identification with those who lost their lives or suffered under the Nazi atrocities while all scorn, abhorrence and hate was piled on the perpetrators. Until recently, few books have focused on the after-war generation. While growing up, the children had to come to terms with the, often sudden, exposure of their parents' active or passive participation in the crimes of the Nazi regime. "The Reader", set in post-war Germany and against the backdrop of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials of the mid-sixties, takes this new and, for our generations, important angle: in the form of the fictional memoir of Michael Berg. Michael, while not refuting guilt, shame, and atonement, is led to examine and dissect the complexity of inter-generational conflicts in the context of his personal experiences. Like Schlink himself, he grapples with the fundamental problem of the relationships between these two generations.

Michael recounts the most important stages in his life, starting with experiences long passed in his youth. While his account follows the chronology of events, he progressively interleaves retrospective reflections on his past conduct, questioning his conflicting emotions - his behaviour. The story starts with Michael's first, secret, love affair at age 15 with a woman more than twice his age. The blossoming erotic relationship strengthens his self-worth and confidence yet, at the same time, increasingly isolating him from his family and peers. Hanna Schmitz, of whose circumstances and background Michael knew very little, was affectionate and standoffish at the same time, prone to abrupt mood swings. The young lover is completely captivated and eager to please. He is the "Reader", in German "Vorleser" is a person who reads aloud to an audience. At her insistence he reads his books to her and it becomes an important element of their shared intimacy. When she disappears one day without any warning, her loss leaves him devastated and scarred for life. He can only seek the reasons in his own actions. Seeing Hanna again years later and in unanticipated surroundings, triggers a flood of questions about the person he loved and thought he knew. Her behaviour raises many questions and Michael discovers a long secret that puts in doubt the facts as they are exposed. He also wrestles with himself over his own inaction when confronted with choices. "What would you have done?" Although addressed to the judge by the defendant, this question hangs over Michael, as it does over his whole generation. It encapsulates the primary dilemma of the child-parent generations relationships. Finally, writing the story of his life, drafting and redrafting it in his head until it is in a publishable form, is seen as a chance for his own recovery and for living his own life.

The Reader, while a work of fiction, is deeply anchored in the personal experiences of the author and symbolic for his generation. His spare and unemotional language underlines the impression of a biographical investigation and is used quite deliberately. The English translation captures the tone and style amazingly well. Reading this book should not be an "easy pleasure" as some reviewers have suggested. The Reader covers difficult and complex terrain in a way that it forces the reader to reflect and question their own position long afterwards. Although written directly for a German audience of Schlink's and my generation, the novel, surprisingly, has attracted world-wide attention. While reviews and reactions among readers are highly diverse and even contradictory, it should be read by as many people as possible and with the care the subject matter deserves. [Friederike Knabe]

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Summary: The Reader by Bernard Schlink
Review: THE READER BY BERNARD SCHLINK

In THE READER, German author, Bernard Schlink, offers us an intriguing situation. Told in the first person, it is about a fifteen-year-old German boy, sick with hepatitus, who, to his great shame, vomits on the street one day and is helped home by a stranger, a woman. He would have forgotten about her except that his mother insists he thank the stranger and buy her flowers with his allowance. I smile to think that a young boy today would, in all probability, protest and tell his mother: No way, Jose! But, being German, he obeys her and this seemingly insignificant incident changes his life.
After he has delivered his flowers, he has no intention of seeing her again. And yet, a week later he finds himself standing in front of her door. Schlink writes: "Often in my life I have done things I had not decided to do." He explains that his behavior is often the opposite of what he had intended as though his behavior is quite independent of his thoughts. I too am German-born and although Germans are sometimes known for being excessively rational (and efficient), I too, have found myself doing the very opposite of what I originally intended do.
The love story begins with a sensitive rendering of the young boy's sexuality being awakened. Our young narrator is fifteen when he meets Frau Schmitz (whom he will soon call Hanna), a woman more than twice his age with whom he begins an almost obsessive relationship. Hanna is a streetcar conductor, a taciturn woman who possesses a mysterious beauty that captivates her young admirer. She is often surly and coldly monosyllabic, given to sudden bursts of temper but her young friend continues to spend his afternoons with her. In spite of their difference in ages, a bond springs up between them that I find entirely believable. I can feel how much she loves her young visitor even as she pushes him away with her coldness. He arrives at her apartment straight from school and tells her what he is reading in his English class. She asks him to read to her and this becomes a ritual she loves and they engage in every afternoon.
This unique story, beautifully translated from the German, illustrates the universal need for love and how, in our fear of rejection, we tend to sabotage our chances of finding it. Schlink is saying: we want to be loved for ourselves but are afraid to be ourselves. Hanna harbors a secret out of a deep shame and embarrassment over what she feels are her inadequacies. As our young man's feelings for Hanna eventually diminish, he also is less than honest with her and will also pay a price for this in the years to come. This story feels absolutely true to me and, especially because of its first person narrative, may well be a personal story taken from the author's own life.
Many years later, our young protagonist, now an adult, is preparing to become an attorney. In a courtroom where he is studying the outcome of a trial dealing with perpetrators of the concentration camps in World War II, to his great surprise, he sees Hanna again. The story now becomes an ever-deepening drama that poses a compelling moral and psychological dilemma. More than this I can not say without giving too much away. Suffice it to say that I became deeply involved in the fate of the two main characters, Hanna and her once-boyish lover.
I work in the field of mental health and it is my belief that the human conflicts that drive this story pertain to all of us whether healthy (if there is such a thing) or mentally ill: We all live with varying degrees of shame and low self-esteem, with feelings of inadequacy which prevent us from speaking honestly to those we love, and thus find outselves in relationships that break apart. Like the characters in this story, we all have a deep-seated need for love, a need to find a place for ourselves in the lives of those we love, to feel that we belong; and yet our inability to reveal our true natures all too often destroys the very connections we most cherish, leading to heartbreaking loneliness.
Our narrator, turned lawyer, writes that his memories of Hanna never leave him. He did marry, he tells us, but the marriage led to divorce. Furthermore, he confesses that all his relationships with women are hampered by his constantly recurring and poignant memories of Hanna.
THE READER is a book I read again and again and and each time am drawn into the heartrending destinies of this ill-fated couple. I enthusiastically recommend it to all who are intrigued, as I am, with the ever complex and emotional affairs of the heart. #

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Summary: Wonderful, moving book...but not perfect.
Review: It has taken me three days to sit down and figure out what it is that I wanted to write about this book. I won't begin to recap the book because many others have done it, and I think that knowing too much about this book will handicap the reader. Go into this raw, don't read too much about it.

This book packs an emotional punch, but it is a punch that is strangely distant, and for me it faded rather quickly. Perhaps it is because I guessed the plots twists before they happened, but I don't think so. I think it is because there is a difference between American and German authors. This work was translated into English and it came across a little too distant for me. I understand the events in the book forced the author to step back, but it was too much for me. The lack of direct emotion was strangely oft-putting to me.

The book is moving, but it is the Chinese food kind of moving. You will be hungry for something emotional rather quickly. It is well written and technically sound novel, but too sanitary.

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Summary: Taught as a Modern Classic in German High Schools
Review: This book was first introduced to me while I was living in Germany by a German high school girl who had to read it for school. Having read the book first in German and then the translation in English years later, I found the English translation to be as stylistically beautiful as it was in German. Perhaps the only problem I had with the translation is that _Der_Vorleser_, which is the German title, really means a person who reads out loud, not just someone who reads.

The secret romance, of a 15 year old boy and a woman in her late thirties starts off as a novel accident. But their relationship deepens as the boy discovers love and the woman discovers a person willing to open the portal of literature to which she has no access; She's illiterate. She mysteriously disappears one day, but the boy doesn't find out what happened until years later while he is a law student witnessing her to be on trial for having been a Nazi camp guard.

The book goes beyond the microcosm of two people, into the psyche of post WWII Germany. The audience to profit most from this book are current German youths whose connection to their Nazi past has been only through their textbooks and their aging grandparents. To appreciate this book, it helps to be familiar with the internal conflict between guilt and disassociation that Germans have with their recent history. And I can see why others, who probably have not probed deep into modern Germany can miss the crucial theme in this book.

To enjoy the beauty of Schlink's style, it has to be read in German. Like any work of literature, something is lost in translation. However, the books stylistic beauty survives in English for the most part. After finishing this book in German, I thought this book was great. After rereading it in English, I understood why it is now being taught as a modern classic in German high schools today.

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Summary: zzzzzzzz
Review: Didn't like this one bit. Slow, dull and predictable, with uninteresting prose and characters. The "surprise twist" toward the end of the book was neither surprising nor much of a twist. Avoid.