The Reader Paperback – January 1, 1997

This is one of the shortest, easiest reads I have ever encountered, yet it manages in those few short pages to wretch from your soul some of the heaviest emotions imaginable. `The Reader' is one of those novels that moves you, and one that never leaves.The story follows young Michael Berg as he starts an illicit affair with an older woman at the ripe old age of fifteen. Hanna is different from anyone he has ever known. She is beautiful and illusive and guarded, but all of these facets of her make her all the more intriguing to Michael. Hanna is drawn to Michael and it becomes apparent that she needs him almost as much as he believes he needs her. They know very little about one another but the love between them continues to grow stronger as they bond over passion, both for each other and for the printed page.Then one day Hanna is gone, and Michael fears he will never see her again.A few years later though, Michael does see Hanna again, but the circumstances surrounding their reunion are less than desirable. Soon Michael is faced with a new perception of his one-time lover and as the years pass his feelings for her and his feelings towards his own actions begin to twist and turn and infect his very being.The one thing that touches me so deeply about `The Reader' is the way the novel slowly unravels and creeps up on you until you're crying uncontrollably and you aren't really aware why until moments later. Yes, there is a subtle calm surrounding the words recorded in Bernhard Schlick's tragic tale of love and loss and that calm makes for one of the most devastating yet honest reads I have experienced in a long time.The novel raises questions of guilt and consequence, of forgiveness and understanding, of loneliness and desperation. `The Reader' brilliantly weaves a breathtaking web of circumstance that permeates each and every page, each and ever word, and takes the reader to a whole new level of emotional understanding. As the final moments are revealed to the reader and he is faced with the same feelings that Michael is battling we are forced to try and comprehend what he must be feeling, and we thus find ourselves ravaged of our emotions as we lay bare and broken on the floor. `The Reader' brought me to tears as I connected Michael and Hanna's story to one of my own and I saw how my actions may have inadvertently caused harm to someone I genuinely care about.That is the last thing that ran through my mind as I closed the novel, and it is the first thing I ponder whenever this novel comes up among friends. `The Reader' causes us to take a step back and weight out our actions and our interactions with others because everything we do has an effect, positive or negative, on the ones we love.

When he was 15, and growing up in Germany, Michael Berg contracted hepatitis. One day, on the way home from school he vomited on the front stoop of an apartment building. The lady who cleaned up the mess was Hanna Schmitz. It was her apartment. The next time he saw her, Michael brought Hanna flowers, she asked him to bring up some coal, which he dutifully did. By the time Michael had finished delivering the coal to Hanna, he was covered in soot. Hanna told him to go take a shower. By the time he had finished, Hanna was standing behind him, naked. And so began a summer long love affair between Michael a 15 year old high school student and Hanna, a 36 year old streetcar operator.The lovemakeing became very ritualistic, always involving bathing, but then a new element was added. Hanna asked Michael to read to her, at first Homer's The Odyssey, and then other classics from literature. And so, every day after school, Michael would go to Hanna's house, make love to her and then read to her. But as the weeks grew to months, tensions appeared. Hanna wanted to be the dominant person in the relationship, and that bothered Michael. Whenever they argued, which was happening more frequently, Michael was the one who always gave in and apologized. At the same time Michael was becoming more popular with girls his own age in school, and so consequently, he became later and later for his meetings with Hanna. As Michael was beginning to feel guilty for withdrawing from Hanna, Hanna broke off the relationship, and just as suddenly as it had begun, the relationship was over.Michael goes on with his life, finishing high school and going to college, where he attended a seminar on the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. He gets to witness a German trial of Nazi prison guards and their victims. To his shock and surprise, one of the Nazi guards being put on trial was Hanna Schmitz. Hanna was accused of barricading a church door under Nazi bombardment. The church contained many Jewish prisoners that were to be sent to Auschwitz. Hanna was also accused of writing the report that detailed the atrocity. Hanna was made the ringleader, but really she was the scapegoat, as the other defendants tried to gain leniency. By now, Michael realizes that Hanna could not have written the report, as he knew she could not read or write, that's why she had him read to her. Hannah wasn't about to admit that she was illiterate, so she was silent as she was accused of these war crimes. Would Michael step in and tell the judge what he knew about Hanna's illiteracy, and spare her from a death sentence? Read the Reader and find out.I recommend this book, but it's a qualified recommendation. It is truly a riveting story and I wanted to read the book because the movie did not go into the level of detail that I wanted, but I soon became frustrated with Schlink's writing style, because I felt in spots where he needed to be more explicit, he was purposefully vague. The author also likes to spring surprises on the reader, for example I thought the ending would be anticlimactic, but it was quite shocking, because in the last few pages of the book, there is a twist. I didn't particularly like the twist it came on too suddenly and unexpectedly. There was also times where he seemed to be assuaging the German collective guilt over Nazi Germany a bit too much. All of these factors detracted from a very good narrative. It's still a good book, but the story drags in places where it shouldn't.For more book reviews, check out my blog reviewswithatude@wordpress.com