The Reader
By Bernhard Schlink
I don’t know about you, but it’s exceedingly rare that a book actually makes me cry. It’s even rarer for me to have this experience while reading a selection from Oprah’s Book Club. Yet this is exactly what happened with The Reader, Bernhard Schilnk’s taut, heartwrenching novel about life in postwar Germany. When 15-year-old Michael Berg falls ill while walking home from school, he encounters Hanna Schmitz, an enigmatic woman in her mid-thirties, with whom he enters into a passionate affair. Later, Hanna disappears from Michael’s life until, as a law student, he goes to witness a war crimes trial and sees Hanna in the dock, where he learns that she once served as a guard in a concentration camp. Both the revelations that arise from the trial, and the role that Michael plays in Hanna’s subsequent redemption, are inextricably linked to the awesome power that words exercise over our lives. The Reader is a spare and deceptively simple novel, but one whose exquisite poignancy lands squarely on the solar plexus, and lingers in the mind.
Neal Kane
©Copyright 2008 Libretto,
Inc. |
