A review by lennyloo
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

2.0

The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink, tells a story about a 15 year old, Michael Berg, who lives in Germany pre-WWII and whilst recovering from a long-term illness, meets and pursues a sexual relationship with a 30 something year old woman, Hanna. The nature of their relationship weirded me out for a while (not that it doesn’t anymore), but I find that her willingness to exploit him sexually creates this strong hold over Michael and endearment for Hanna that he is not able to shake throughout his entire life. This is also the first book I’ve annotated since high school, which made it more enjoyable to actively participate while reading and had me underlining early parts of the book with “wtf” and “this is creepy”. Later on in the book, trials surrounding holocaust camps occur, and I think that the reflections of Michael, the narrator, offer an interesting take to the whole situation. The narrative focuses less on the atrocities themselves, and more so how the next generation of German citizens experiences the collective cultural guilt of these sins, as well as condemning their parents and the older generation for being complicit, active, or tolerating anyone who played a part in it. Overall, this book took me a while to get through, and I think it was well written but just not the story I was expecting. I could not get over how strange the central plot of the relationship between Michael and Hanna was, and thought so much how creepy and inappropriate it is. It is interesting to see Michaels character development throughout his life, but at the same time not really, because he isnt really a super likable character due to the fact that we don’t know Michael for who he is, only for his obsession with Hanna (which may actually just be who he is). I just wanted to say “move on and get a grip!” Like another reviewer said, the takeaway from this book I suppose is that literacy is something we take for granted (which doesn’t seem relevant in the grand scheme of this review, but it revealed later on in the book).