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kandicez 's review for:
The Reader
by Bernhard Schlink
I read this book long, long ago and then it was chosen for my Movie/Book club at the local library. I had not seen the movie because I wasn't thrilled with the book. I realize this is a book review, but I feel it only fair to mention, and compare, the movie as well now that I have seen it. This is one of those rare instances that the movie was better.
The book is written in a very very linear way. For this particular subject, I feel the movie handled scenes better. By the end of the book we know Michael has been emotionally crippled by what takes place between he and Hanna. The movie lets us know that right up front. If it weren't bad enough that an older woman would seduce a 15 year old boy, the opening scene of the movie alerts us to the fact that there is more what the fuckery to come.
The novel touches on parts of our past we want to forget. Parts we think have no excuse and can never, ever be forgiven. Showing us Hanna's "crimes" in the framework of her seduction of a young boy makes them less forgivable to some and more palatable to others. She is a real person. With feelings, wants, hopes and crushed dreams. She is not some faceless name.
Schlink, like so many others who have written about the Holocaust and its aftermath, shows us that the Nazis were a humongous machine with so, so many cogs and screws that were only working with the whole. They were not making decisions or policy, they were "going along". It's wrong, but when Hanna asks "What should I have done? Should I not have signed up for the SS at Siemens?", we see that it's one step after another, many, many steps that lead to atrocity. Which was the first step? In hindsight we may be able to pinpoint that, but as those steps are taken, it's just one more in a long line of steps.
Schlink could have done a better job at pinpointing those steps. In real life we have only hindsight to go by. A novelist has the ability to use time as he will, bend it if need be, to show us what will eventually be most important. I feel he lost that opportunity. Books are not real life and the ability to show us life "better" should be taken advantage of. Schlink did not do that.
I would give the story here five stars, but since I feel we are rating the book and not just the idea behind the book, I can only give the way that story was told three stars.
The book is written in a very very linear way. For this particular subject, I feel the movie handled scenes better. By the end of the book we know Michael has been emotionally crippled by what takes place between he and Hanna. The movie lets us know that right up front. If it weren't bad enough that an older woman would seduce a 15 year old boy, the opening scene of the movie alerts us to the fact that there is more what the fuckery to come.
The novel touches on parts of our past we want to forget. Parts we think have no excuse and can never, ever be forgiven. Showing us Hanna's "crimes" in the framework of her seduction of a young boy makes them less forgivable to some and more palatable to others. She is a real person. With feelings, wants, hopes and crushed dreams. She is not some faceless name.
Schlink, like so many others who have written about the Holocaust and its aftermath, shows us that the Nazis were a humongous machine with so, so many cogs and screws that were only working with the whole. They were not making decisions or policy, they were "going along". It's wrong, but when Hanna asks "What should I have done? Should I not have signed up for the SS at Siemens?", we see that it's one step after another, many, many steps that lead to atrocity. Which was the first step? In hindsight we may be able to pinpoint that, but as those steps are taken, it's just one more in a long line of steps.
Schlink could have done a better job at pinpointing those steps. In real life we have only hindsight to go by. A novelist has the ability to use time as he will, bend it if need be, to show us what will eventually be most important. I feel he lost that opportunity. Books are not real life and the ability to show us life "better" should be taken advantage of. Schlink did not do that.
I would give the story here five stars, but since I feel we are rating the book and not just the idea behind the book, I can only give the way that story was told three stars.