The Reader

I love Kate Winslet. I do, I think she's a bit great so this is the first of my three 'Kate Winslet books', not of course that she wrote any of them, it's just that she's starred in their adaptation. The book was written by Bernard Schlink. Set in Germany in the 1950s it spans 40 years of the narrator, Michael Bergs life. We meet him at 15 where a chance encounter with a young woman Hannah Schmitz has a greater impact on his life than he could possibly imagine. The novel is divided into three parts and it starts off as a love story, Michael falling head over heels for this relatively older woman and they commence a brief affair and we learn about Hanna through Michael, she likes to be read to, she seems to be a bit temperamental and can be both affectionate and stand-offish, sometimes within the same sentence. Then one day she has gone, abruptly packed up her life without a word, leaving Michael devastated. In the second part Michael is now at university studying law, and as part of his classes he attend a trial investigating the involvement of several women guards at Nazi war camps and in a tragic incident involving a number of prisoners locked inside a burning church. It is revealed Hannah is one of the guards under trial and that's when it gets interesting. Because this revelation leads us to one of the main issues in the novel, that for the generation of post war Germans who in Michaels case fell in love, or where taught or where brought up my people who where directly or indirectly involved in the crimes perpetrated during the German war effort their feelings are thrown into turmoil, the shame or guilt to fall in love with someone who may have committed atrocious crimes or to be faced with the realisation that maybe your parents who brought you up and taught you right from wrong, stood by and did nothing would throw your moral certainty into a fair amount of disarray. As the trial progresses the actions of Hanna are explained by a secret of hers, that would although not absolve her guilt it would at the least lessen her charges however she is too ashamed to admit and it seems Michael is the only one that has figured it out, her past actions in their relationship helping him come to the realisation. He toys with talking to the judge but in the end doesn't feel it's his right to reveal something Hanna so clearly doesn't want divulged even though she maybe can't see what the consequence of keeping it to herself would have. The final part brings us to Michael with a failed marriage and a daughter, a man who has never really been able to get over Hanna, in two senses I suppose both the whole being unable to love someone like he loved her and the shame of having loved someone who could commit such atrocities , someone he can't forgive but can't forget or leave behind. He ends up sending her tapes of him reading to prison and it is actually very touching. The end I found terribly sad and this book will stay with me for a long time. I guess it's my feelings about Hanna in particular, if you heard her crimes without any background information you'd immediately condemn her, she'd be a monster but I felt a lot of pity for her, in many ways I found her the most likeable character in the novel she was just a regular citizen and she was doing her job not that i'm saying that makes what happened during the war OK. Obviously there where Nazis who where sick individuals and the crimes committed in the holocaust are horrific but we can't just make sweeping generalizations that all Germans in that period of time where monsters. To forgive is too much but if you put yourself in those regular citizens shoes you can see, or maybe its just me, but it would be difficult to know what you would do. I highly recommend this novel, it is written well, not spectacular, but it's how Schlink deals with the subject that is the bit that got me. Bonus review: The film adaptation of this is excellent, minor bits of the story are changed but overall it is very true to the book and I would have to say one of those rare occasions where the film is on par with the novel. Plus Kate Winslet is in it! (and she got an oscar for it)