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The Reader Paperback – January 1, 1997
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INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.
"A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel." —Los Angeles Times
When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.
- Print length218 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1997
- Dimensions5.18 x 0.6 x 7.98 inches
- ISBN-109780375707971
- ISBN-13978-0375707971
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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
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AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB SELECTION
"A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel." —Los Angeles Times
"Moving, suggestive and ultimately hopeful.... [The Reader] leaps national boundaries and speaks straight to the heart."—The New York Times Book Review
"Arresting, philosophically elegant, morally complex.... Mr. Schlink tells his story with marvelous directness and simplicity."—The New York Times
"Haunting.... What Schlink does best, what makes this novel most memorable, are the small moments of highly charged eroticism." —Francine Prose, Elle
From the Inside Flap
When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover--then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.
From the Back Cover
When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover--then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.
About the Author
BERNHARD SCHLINK was born in Germany in 1944. A professor of law at the University of Berlin and a practicing judge, he is also the author of several prize-winning crime novels. He lives in Bonn and Berlin.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
When I was fifteen, I got hepatitis. It started in the fall and lasted until spring. As the old year darkened and turned colder, I got weaker and weaker. Things didn't start to improve until the new year. January was warm, and my mother moved my bed out onto the balcony. I saw sky, sun, clouds, and heard the voices of children playing in the courtyard. As dusk came one evening in February, there was the sound of a blackbird singing.
The first time I ventured outside, it was to go from Blumenstrasse, where we lived on the second floor of a massive turn-of-the-century building, to Bahnhofstrasse. That's where I'd thrown up on the way home from school one day the previous October. I'd been feeling weak for days, in a way that was completely new to me. Every step was an effort. When I was faced with stairs either at home or at school, my legs would hardly carry me. I had no appetite. Even if I sat down at the table hungry, I soon felt queasy. I woke up every morning with a dry mouth and the sensation that my insides were in the wrong place and too heavy for my body. I was ashamed of being so weak. I was even more ashamed when I threw up. That was another thing that had never happened to me before. My mouth was suddenly full, I tried to swallow everything down again, and clenched my teeth with my hand in front of my mouth, but it all burst out of my mouth anyway straight through my fingers. I leaned against the wall of the building, looked down at the vomit around my feet, and retched something clear and sticky.
When rescue came, it was almost an assault. The woman seized my arm and pulled me through the dark entryway into the courtyard. Up above there were lines strung from window to window, loaded with laundry. Wood was stacked in the courtyard; in an open workshop a saw screamed and shavings flew. The woman turned on the tap, washed my hand first, and then cupped both of hers and threw water in my face. I dried myself with a handkerchief.
"Get that one!" There were two pails standing by the faucet; she grabbed one and filled it. I took the other one, filled it, and followed her through the entryway. She swung her arm, the water sluiced down across the walk and washed the vomit into the gutter. Then she took my pail and sent a second wave of water across the walk.
When she straightened up, she saw I was crying. "Hey, kid," she said, startled, "hey, kid"--and took me in her arms. I wasn't much taller than she was, I could feel her breasts against my chest. I smelled the sourness of my own breath and felt her fresh sweat as she held me, and didn't know where to look. I stopped crying.
She asked me where I lived, put the pails down in the entryway, and took me home, walking beside me holding my schoolbag in one hand and my arm in the other. It's no great distance from Bahnhofstrasse to Blumenstrasse. She walked quickly, and her decisiveness helped me to keep pace with her. She said goodbye in front of our building.
That same day my mother called in the doctor, who diagnosed hepatitis. At some point I told my mother about the woman. If it hadn't been for that, I don't think I would have gone to see her. But my mother simply assumed that as soon as I was better, I would use my pocket money to buy some flowers, go introduce myself, and say thank you, which was why at the end of February I found myself heading for Bahnhofstrasse.
Chapter Two
The building on Bahnhofstrasse is no longer there. I don't know when or why it was torn down. I was away from my hometown for many years. The new building, which must have been put up in the seventies or eighties, has five floors plus finished space under the roof, is devoid of balconies or arched windows, and its smooth façade is an expanse of pale plaster. A plethora of doorbells indicates a plethora of tiny apartments, with tenants moving in and out as casually as you would pick up and return a rented car. There's a computer store on the ground floor where once there were a pharmacy, a supermarket, and a video store.
The old building was as tall, but with only four floors, a first floor of faceted sandstone blocks, and above it three floors of brickwork with sandstone arches, balconies, and window surrounds. Several steps led up to the first floor and the stairwell; they were wide at the bottom, narrower above, set between walls topped with iron banisters and curving outwards at street level. The front door was flanked by pillars, and from the corners of the architrave one lion looked up Bahnhofstrasse while another looked down. The entryway through which the woman had led me to the tap in the courtyard was a side entrance.
I had been aware of this building since I was a little boy. It dominated the whole row. I used to think that if it made itself any heavier and wider, the neighboring buildings would have to move aside and make room for it. Inside, I imagined a stairwell with plaster moldings, mirrors, and an oriental runner held down with highly polished brass rods. I assumed that grand people would live in such a grand building. But because the building had darkened with the passing of the years and the smoke of the trains, I imagined that the grand inhabitants would be just as somber, and somehow peculiar--deaf or dumb or hunchbacked or lame.
In later years I dreamed about the building again and again. The dreams were similar, variations on one dream and one theme. I'm walking through a strange town and I see the house. It's one in a row of buildings in a district I don't know. I go on, confused, because the house is familiar but its surroundings are not. Then I realize that I've seen the house before. I'm not picturing Bahnhofstrasse in my hometown, but another city, or another country. For example, in my dream I'm in Rome, see the house, and realize I've seen it already in Bern. This dream recognition comforts me; seeing the house again in different surroundings is no more surprising than encountering an old friend by chance in a strange place. I turn around, walk back to the house, and climb the steps. I want to go in. I turn the door handle.
If I see the house somewhere in the country, the dream is more long-drawn-out, or I remember its details better. I'm driving a car. I see the house on the right and keep going, confused at first only by the fact that such an obviously urban building is standing there in the middle of the countryside. Then I realize that this is not the first time I've seen it, and I'm doubly confused. When I remember where I've seen it before, I turn around and drive back. In the dream, the road is always empty, as I can turn around with my tires squealing and race back. I'm afraid I'll be too late, and I drive faster. Then I see it. It is surrounded by fields, rape or wheat or vines in the Palatinate, lavender in Provence. The landscape is flat, or at most gently rolling. There are no trees. The day is cloudless, the sun is shining, the air shimmers and the road glitters in the heat. The fire walls make the building look unprepossessing and cut off. They could be the firewalls of any building. The house is no darker than it was on Bahnhofstrasse, but the windows are so dusty that you can't see anything inside the rooms, not even the curtains; it looks blind.
I stop on the side of the road and walk over to the entrance. There's nobody about, not a sound to be heard, not even a distant engine, a gust of wind, a bird. The world is dead. I go up the steps and turn the knob.
But I do not open the door. I wake up knowing simply that I took hold of the knob and turned it. Then the whole dream comes back to me, and I know that I've dreamed it before.
Chapter Three
I didn't know the woman's name.
Clutching my bunch of flowers, I hesitated in front of the door and all the bells. I would rather have turned around and left, but then a man came out of the building, asked who I was looking for, and directed me to Frau Schmitz on the third floor.
No decorative plaster, no mirrors, no runner. Whatever unpretentious beauty the stairwell might once have had, it could never have been comparable to the grandeur of the façade, and it was long gone in any case. The red paint on the stairs had worn through in the middle, the stamped green linoleum that was glued on the walls to shoulder height was rubbed away to nothing, and bits of string had been stretched across the gaps in the banisters. It smelled of cleaning fluid. Perhaps I only became aware of all this some time later. It was always just as shabby and just as clean, and there was always the same smell of cleaning fluid, sometimes mixed with the smell of cabbage or beans, or fried food or boiling laundry.
I never learned a thing about the other people who lived in the building apart from these smells, the mats outside the apartment doors, and the nameplates under the doorbells. I cannot even remember meeting another tenant on the stairs.
Nor do I remember how I greeted Frau Schmitz. I had probably prepared two or three sentences about my illness and her help and how grateful I was, and recited them to her. She led me into the kitchen.
It was the largest room in the apartment, and contained a stove and sink, a tub and a boiler, a table, two chairs, a kitchen cabinet, a wardrobe, and a couch with a red velvet spread thrown over it. There was no window. Light came in through the panes of the door leading out onto the balcony--not much light; the kitchen was only bright when the door was open. Then you heard the scream of the saws from the carpenter's shop in the yard and smelled the smell of wood.
The apartment also had a small, cramped living room with a dresser, a table, four chairs, a wing chair, and a coal stove. It was almost never heated in winter, nor was it used much in summer either. The window faced Bahnhofstrasse, with a view of what had been the railroad station, but was now being excavated and already in places held the freshly laid foundations of the new courthouse and administration buildings. Finally, the apartment also had a windowless toilet. When the toilet smelled, so did the hall.
I don't remember what we talked about in the kitchen. Frau Schmitz was ironing; she had spread a woolen blanket and a linen cloth over the table; lifting one piece of laundry after another from the basket, she ironed them, folded them, and laid them on one of the two chairs. I sat on the other. She also ironed her underwear, and I didn't want to look, but I couldn't help looking. She was wearing a sleeveless smock, blue with little pale red flowers on it. Her shoulder-length, ash-blond hair was fastened with a clip at the back of her neck. Her bare arms were pale. Her gestures of lifting the iron, using it, setting it down again, and then folding and putting away the laundry were an exercise in slow concentration, as were her movements as she bent over and then straightened up again. Her face as it was then has been overlaid in my memory by the faces she had later. If I see her in my mind's eye as she was then, she doesn't have a face at all, and I have to reconstruct it. High forehead, high cheekbones, pale blue eyes, full lips that formed a perfect curve without any indentation, square chin. A broad-planed, strong, womanly face. I know that I found it beautiful. But I cannot recapture its beauty.
Product details
- ASIN : 0375707972
- Publisher : Vintage (January 1, 1997)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 218 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780375707971
- ISBN-13 : 978-0375707971
- Item Weight : 6.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.18 x 0.6 x 7.98 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #57,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19 in German Literature (Books)
- #4,481 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #4,554 in Romantic Suspense (Books)
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The novel works well along several different dimensions. There is the love story. Or is it an obsession? Or is it just lust that lasts a lifetime? The narrator is Michael Berg, age 15 when the novel commences. It is the fulfillment of every adolescent boy's dream. Serendipity leads him into a love affair with a 36 year old woman, Hanna Schmitz. The year is around 1959. Schlink describes the love scenes with great skill... with just a sufficient amount of detail... to, er, ah, place the reader in the scene. I had to struggle with whether or not Schlink attributed too much maturity to a 15 year old. As Leonard Cohen once proclaimed: "I never met a woman until I was 65; before then I only saw these miracles before me." Yet young Berg seemed to realize that the eroticism was not in some body part or piece of clothing, but in the manner in which she held herself, and conveyed her invitation to him. She managed to "imprint" herself upon him - intentionally or not - the question would haunt him... and he would carry various images of her throughout his life. Some of the images, naturally were erotic in nature, others were how her skirt billowed out as she rode the bike in the countryside. Sad to say, the "reality check" is, at least in America, somehow, today, all of this would be illegal.
Hanna Schmitz is illiterate. And she hides it. She goes to great lengths to hide it. It takes Berg a considerable period of time to figure this out due to her clever dissimulation. Schlink provides the clues for the reader, who, as intended, figures it out before Berg does. One just does not expect someone in the Western world to be illiterate. This aspect of the novel particularly resonated, because I have literally, as it were, "been there." I still vividly remember the moment that I realized that the lieutenant could not read a map, and it was a moment that he desperately needed to be able to read the map... but unlike Hanna, he admitted it to me... and thus, under "other duties as assigned," I became "The Reader" for him, just like Michael Berg.
Schmitz was of that certain age that ensured her participation in the Second World War, as a German, with a role in the Holocaust. She is being tried for that role. In many ways she does not understand the process - legal or political. And at one point in the trial she asks the judge the subject question: "I mean... so what would you have done?" Schlink ensures that the reader considers this a reasonable question, while at the same time pointing out that in the "legal system" a defendant is not permitted to ask a judge such a question. Meanwhile, Berg himself, a much older Berg, who is in law school, struggles with the dilemma of trying to balance condemnation with understanding.
The German people, "of a certain age," have spent much time trying to conceal their involvement with the evils of their participation in that war, while only a few have been willing to confront it. As Schlink points out, there is a major division within German society itself between those of that certain age, and their children. There remains that "there but for fortunate go I" aspect of a certain time and place. And then there is the matter of that aforementioned lieutenant, and the evils of another war. The German people have paid out reparations, in an effort of partial atonement. Can we as Americans say the same? But that is another book... as for Schlink's, 6-stars.
The lovemakeing became very ritualistic, always involving bathing, but then a new element was added. Hanna asked Michael to read to her, at first Homer's The Odyssey, and then other classics from literature. And so, every day after school, Michael would go to Hanna's house, make love to her and then read to her. But as the weeks grew to months, tensions appeared. Hanna wanted to be the dominant person in the relationship, and that bothered Michael. Whenever they argued, which was happening more frequently, Michael was the one who always gave in and apologized. At the same time Michael was becoming more popular with girls his own age in school, and so consequently, he became later and later for his meetings with Hanna. As Michael was beginning to feel guilty for withdrawing from Hanna, Hanna broke off the relationship, and just as suddenly as it had begun, the relationship was over.
Michael goes on with his life, finishing high school and going to college, where he attended a seminar on the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. He gets to witness a German trial of Nazi prison guards and their victims. To his shock and surprise, one of the Nazi guards being put on trial was Hanna Schmitz. Hanna was accused of barricading a church door under Nazi bombardment. The church contained many Jewish prisoners that were to be sent to Auschwitz. Hanna was also accused of writing the report that detailed the atrocity. Hanna was made the ringleader, but really she was the scapegoat, as the other defendants tried to gain leniency. By now, Michael realizes that Hanna could not have written the report, as he knew she could not read or write, that's why she had him read to her. Hannah wasn't about to admit that she was illiterate, so she was silent as she was accused of these war crimes. Would Michael step in and tell the judge what he knew about Hanna's illiteracy, and spare her from a death sentence? Read the Reader and find out.
I recommend this book, but it's a qualified recommendation. It is truly a riveting story and I wanted to read the book because the movie did not go into the level of detail that I wanted, but I soon became frustrated with Schlink's writing style, because I felt in spots where he needed to be more explicit, he was purposefully vague. The author also likes to spring surprises on the reader, for example I thought the ending would be anticlimactic, but it was quite shocking, because in the last few pages of the book, there is a twist. I didn't particularly like the twist it came on too suddenly and unexpectedly. There was also times where he seemed to be assuaging the German collective guilt over Nazi Germany a bit too much. All of these factors detracted from a very good narrative. It's still a good book, but the story drags in places where it shouldn't.
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The woman was illiterate and maybe made most of her decisions based on her reality. She ashamed that she was illiterate. But she was thirsty of knowledge.
Is so difficult and frustrating to try to understand the reason behind some people to join and follow the SS instructions.
There is a passage in the book that describes a moment when Jews are being killed. You get the impression that it was because they were a bunch of cowards that didn't want to end like the Jews, dead.
I might be a coward myself because I hate to read books about the Holocaust. I want to erase what happened. I can't accept that we has humans have the capability to destroy whatever and whoever because they are different, think different, behave different... But we haven't learned. It is still around us.
PS I gave it a three because I didn't care much about his story. It was like he was trying to justify his actions and when he had the chance to really help Hanna, he didn't do it.
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Reviewed in Mexico on May 10, 2022
I guessed he was compelled by his studies to write a novel about post war German peoples relation with Nazi Germany .
It is sort exposition of the soul of the post war German
The book is very structured, containing three sections, each split into three -four pages.
Sentences are direct, simple, easy to read.
It could be a good story but plot was raw.
And it ends sort of rough, raw, and vague.
Maybe all this are features of the way post war German should reckoning with the past.