The Reader

This is definitely one of those books that haunts the memory. It stays with you days after you read it. It’s philosophical in tone.
I think Hanna was a victim of circumstances & that Michael was to harsh in his judgement of her.
At the beginning of the book she shows great compassion as she helps a vomiting Michael & walks him back home.
When it is later revealed that she picked the weaker children to read to her before they were put to death, I think she was trapped by the horrible circumstances & reality of the Nazi regime, & that making their lives a little more livable before their untimely deaths was the only thing she had in her power to do to show compassion.
There is also a lot of symbolism in the book. For example: Hanna is illiterate at a time when Germany’s average citizen had a Bachelor’s degree.
As for her anger toward a young Michael Berg during their vacation, I think this was do to a feeling of helplessness. Put yourself in her shoes for a moment & imagine not being able to read at all. You are 100% reliant on your lover to read the signs to get were your going & thus to get back from whence you came. You can’t even order from a menu. You wake up miles from home & that lover you are reliant on to read signs & order food has vanished & left you a piece a paper with writing on it, & you can’t read it. You must feel stranded & hopeless. Thus when the young Mr. Berg returns he is surprised by an understandably irate Frau Schmidt.
She is innocent to an extent, & her more guilty ex-coworkers get much more lenient sentences by contrast.
Where does guilt begin or innocence win? I think that is an unanswerable question, & one for the history of not only Hanna, but all of mankind throughout all of history.

I purchased this Kindle book in January 2017. THE READER isnt the type of book that I normally read so it sat unread until I noticed that it was the oldest unread book in my Kindle library. Last week, I decided to read it.

I had forgotten what THE READER was about. When I started reading it, I thought I had gotten a new version of SUMMER OF 42 by Herman Raucher with its forbidden love. I wasnt too impress. I almost thought about giving up on the book. After reading about 1/3 of the book, it changed to something totally unexpected – The Holocaust, German guilty and atonement, war crimes tribunal, war crimes defenses (I was just following orders), illiteracy, etc. The last half of the book had me totally engrossed and mesmerized. The ending was a tear jerker for me. This is one of my TOP 100 books; and one that I will probably re-read.

I’ll be thinking about this book for many days to come, I just know it. It was a beautiful story of love and loss, bittersweet memories and so many things left unsaid. As I journeyed with Michael down memory lane, I couldn’t help but feel as if I were right there with him. The author paints such details with his words that I felt Michael’s loss when Hanna up and disappeared. Then again, as he battled with himself about what he’d discovered about her as she sat being judged in a courtroom, preparing to take on all the blame for crimes she may or may not have committed. The tears I fought back as the book came to its unfortunate end were from the rollercoaster ride of emotions I felt throughout Michael’s journey. As I finished reading, I simply sat and starred off at nothing in particular; not really certain how to feel but at the same time feeling everything. While I knew this was a story of fiction, I couldn’t help but feel as if it were all true; I’d become so attached to the characters. This Bernhard Schlink story was truly captivating and I’m incredibly grateful to Carol Brown Janeway for translating it for my reading pleasure.

If the purpose of this book is to make the reader think about guilt and conscience, it succeeds. But it’s so much more complex than that. If you loves someone who is guilty of something horrible, does that make you also guilty? Does guilt for smaller things equate to or trump guilt for more horrible things? How do we look on our past or the past of our parents’ generation? Where in lies absolution, if it exists?

This book is moving, romantic, sad, upsetting, and … poignant. All of which seem unimportant, really, but this is one of those books that ought to be read, including by you. It’s not just about ‘Vergangenheitsbewltigung,” really, but about our care and lack of care for other human beings. Which, really, is the crux of life, no?

In another way, this is a book about books, not in a primary way, but in a secondary way that is quite beautiful, even if it isn’t the point.

The author says,”The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. It couldn’t be more true.

This is a great book because it looks at the most sensitive of issues and struggles to find some explanation. It is essentially the personification of Germany through Hannah, an illiterate who is left with few alternatives but to be an evil doer. It poses the question of what we can forgive and whether an excuse is acceptable or even important. This is a book you should read if you have seen the film because it asks a different question and does not seek to sensationalise or justify. It is a case of coming to terms with the past and I think different people may have different views on it. My own is that the writer accomplished quite brilliantly what he sought to.

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