prendrelemick
06-17-2009, 08:03 AM
I appologise if this has already been done .
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink.
A well written and thought provoking book. We loved it at my Book Club where it provoked a lively and far reaching discussion.
There may be a few in the world who haven't read it or seen the film, so I will try not to include any spoilers.
The story is set in Germany after the war. Michael is a young man who has a passionate affair with Hanna, a much older woman. But Hanna has a secret that she feels she must keep at all costs. It is her primary concern, it keeps her aloof from society and seemingly detached from him. She disappears, and the next time he sees her she is in court, accused of war crimes. She cannot defend herself except by revealing to the world the shame of a deep personal secret that has blighted her life and brought her to where she is.
Michael's life is also blighted by their relationship and the revelations he has at the time of the trial.
He spends the following years in a kind of limbo, trying to make sense of it all.
That is the bare bones of the story, but its really an examination of the issues arising from the Holocaust. The theme is guilt. German guilt. Guilt of commission, guilt of omission, personal guilt, collective guilt, guilt of betrayal and guilt by association. Michael is of a new generation, how are they supposed to deal with the past, where their mothers, fathers, uncles and even lovers, were involved in such terrors?. How can they comprehend the incomprehensible, should they condemn or fall silent in shame? Is it their shame too ?
When Hanna asks the Judge, “What would you have done?.” It is not a rhetorical question, she genuinely wants to know. The success of this book is that it manages to explore that question without in any way mitigating the crimes committed by Germans during the war. Schlink presents the issues in a thoughtfull and low key way as he weaves them into a very readable story.
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink.
A well written and thought provoking book. We loved it at my Book Club where it provoked a lively and far reaching discussion.
There may be a few in the world who haven't read it or seen the film, so I will try not to include any spoilers.
The story is set in Germany after the war. Michael is a young man who has a passionate affair with Hanna, a much older woman. But Hanna has a secret that she feels she must keep at all costs. It is her primary concern, it keeps her aloof from society and seemingly detached from him. She disappears, and the next time he sees her she is in court, accused of war crimes. She cannot defend herself except by revealing to the world the shame of a deep personal secret that has blighted her life and brought her to where she is.
Michael's life is also blighted by their relationship and the revelations he has at the time of the trial.
He spends the following years in a kind of limbo, trying to make sense of it all.
That is the bare bones of the story, but its really an examination of the issues arising from the Holocaust. The theme is guilt. German guilt. Guilt of commission, guilt of omission, personal guilt, collective guilt, guilt of betrayal and guilt by association. Michael is of a new generation, how are they supposed to deal with the past, where their mothers, fathers, uncles and even lovers, were involved in such terrors?. How can they comprehend the incomprehensible, should they condemn or fall silent in shame? Is it their shame too ?
When Hanna asks the Judge, “What would you have done?.” It is not a rhetorical question, she genuinely wants to know. The success of this book is that it manages to explore that question without in any way mitigating the crimes committed by Germans during the war. Schlink presents the issues in a thoughtfull and low key way as he weaves them into a very readable story.