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bigfrickingswede 's review for:
The Reader
by Bernhard Schlink
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Reader throws you right into the deep end of a moral quandary--a quandary because of its emotional component. The protagonist at fifteen is the victim of a continuing crime that he's not even able to name as such then or in later years, even as he goes through law school and eventually becomes a legal historian. Because he is in love (or maybe more accurately, believes he is in love) with the woman who groomed and abused him when she was in her 30s.
For some reason the book's description says the book was hailed for its "coiled eroticism," which is only possible if you let yourself forget how young Michael was when he began to be abused, and that his abuser was over twice his age. While you are seeing the abuse from the eyes of a hormonal teenage boy, the narration only allows for minimal voyeurism. And even then, Michael's narration shows how he avoids his own misgivings about his abuser, Hannah--he's never quite sure why he can't reveal the "relationship" to his other friends, and knows he would never mention it to his parents, though he carefully never says why. We are fully in his emotional confusion as a teenager, and then those emotions get even more tangled in another moral conundrum when he next sees Hannah when he is an adult and she is on trial for a different, more heinous crime from her time as a concentration camp guard in World War 2. Why Michael does what he does at this point and later in life (is it ethical is it love? hate?) can lead to debates in the reader's own head.
What makes the novel so great is how its characters run into their ethical problems. The difficulty of the German generation growing up after the war is dealing with how family and other leaders may have taken part in the Nazi regime. Even if you are not in that specific group of people, you can feel the challenge and see how it applies elsewhere. How those who are abused may still care for their abuser. How bad history, whether it's in a family, friend group, or society is never as simply dealt with as saying "that was wrong." Yes, it was. Getting to that point is a challenge. What to do with that knowledge is also a challenge. It's one worth thinking and reading about.
For some reason the book's description says the book was hailed for its "coiled eroticism," which is only possible if you let yourself forget how young Michael was when he began to be abused, and that his abuser was over twice his age. While you are seeing the abuse from the eyes of a hormonal teenage boy, the narration only allows for minimal voyeurism. And even then, Michael's narration shows how he avoids his own misgivings about his abuser, Hannah--he's never quite sure why he can't reveal the "relationship" to his other friends, and knows he would never mention it to his parents, though he carefully never says why. We are fully in his emotional confusion as a teenager, and then those emotions get even more tangled in another moral conundrum when he next sees Hannah when he is an adult and she is on trial for a different, more heinous crime from her time as a concentration camp guard in World War 2. Why Michael does what he does at this point and later in life (is it ethical is it love? hate?) can lead to debates in the reader's own head.
What makes the novel so great is how its characters run into their ethical problems. The difficulty of the German generation growing up after the war is dealing with how family and other leaders may have taken part in the Nazi regime. Even if you are not in that specific group of people, you can feel the challenge and see how it applies elsewhere. How those who are abused may still care for their abuser. How bad history, whether it's in a family, friend group, or society is never as simply dealt with as saying "that was wrong." Yes, it was. Getting to that point is a challenge. What to do with that knowledge is also a challenge. It's one worth thinking and reading about.