The Reader
By Bernhard Schlink
Oprah Book Club® Selection #24, February 1999
Editorial Review:
Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany’s Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? “We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable…. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?”
The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review’s Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people–parents, grandparents, even lovers–who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink’s prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue, and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany’s pre- and postwar generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence. –R. Ellis
Read first chapter FREE – Click right and left arrows or scroll mouse.
T
he Reader
Kate Winslet (Actor), Ralph Fiennes (Actor), Stephen Daldry (Director) | Rated: R | Format: DVD
Editorial Review:
What is the nature of guilt–and how can the human spirit survive when confronted with deep and horrifying truths? The Reader, a hushed and haunting meditation on these knotty questions, is sorrowful and shocking, yet leavened by a deep love story that is its heart. In postwar Germany, young schoolboy Michael (German actor David Cross) meets and begins a tender romance with the older, mysterious Hanna (Kate Winslet, whose performance is a revelation). The two make love hungrily in Hanna’s shabby apartment, yet their true intimacy comes as Michael reads aloud to Hanna in bed, from his school assignments, textbooks, even comic books. Hanna delights in the readings, and Michael delights in Hanna.
Years later, the two cross paths again, and Michael (played as an adult by Ralph Fiennes) learns, slowly, horrifyingly, of acts that Hanna may have been involved in during the war. There is a war crimes trial, and the accused at one point asks the panel of prosecutors: “Well, what would you have done?” It is that question–as one German professor says later: “How can the next generation of Germans come to terms with the Holocaust?”–that is both heartbreaking and unanswerable. Winslet plays every shade of gray in her portrayal of Hanna, and Fiennes is riveting as the man who must rewrite history–his own and his country’s–as he learns daily, hourly, of deeds that defy categorization, and morality. “No matter how much washing and scrubbing,” one character says matter of factly, “some sins don’t wash away.” The Reader (with nods to similar films like Sophie’s Choice and The English Patient dares to present that unnerving premise, without offering an easy solution. –A.T. Hurley
Related Posts
Night by Elie Wiesel – Oprah Book Club® Selection, January 2006
The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard – Oprah’s Book Club Selection #1
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison – Oprah’s Book Club Selection 35
Back Roads by Tawni O’Dell – Oprah’s Book Club Selection #34
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi – Oprah’s Book Club Selection #5
Latest posts by Susan (see all)
- My Second 5-Gallon Bucket Garden – Tomatoes, Red Bells, Green Beans and Herbs - June 25, 2016
- Roasted Eggplant Parmesan – Plus a couple of simple low carb recipes with Eggplant! - September 16, 2015
- Cauliflower Mac & Cheese - August 21, 2015