The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am fighting a battle inside, wondering what my rating should be for this book? I mean, look at the story-line! It's a story anyone would love to hate! An affair between a young, sickly, every-day kind of a teenager and a woman, old enough to be his mother, who has a weird fetish for weak children, who can read to her! Creeps the hell out of you!

Then the affair ends abruptly and has disastrous consequences, for the Kid, of course (Kid capitalised because that's what he is called throughout the novel!) and you are like: "This HAD to happen when you're with a woman, who is strangely cruel in her ways and whose character emanates a weird coolness!"

Also, there is the ultimate discovery that the woman is illiterate which isn't that shocking because it doesn't take rocket scince to figure it out by that point. Add the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp and you have *TA DADA DADADADADADADADA TA DADA* The Reader.

And yet, despite these seemingly predictable, obviously creepy elements in the book, it is BLOODY BRILLIANT!

No, the language isn't poetic or anything. It is, in fact, the simplest translations that a book could have had and I am sure the original German was much better but that's where the magic begins! All the while, when I was reading it, I didn't feel the usual, familiar feeling of being "in the book as one of the characters." I didn't befriend Michael, nor did I like Hanna and still, I understood them, in a strange, looking-at-them-from-a-distance kind of way. It was like being inside Tom Riddle's Diary or Dumbledore's Pensieve , looking at Voldemort's life, understanding why he became what he became and yet not being able to relate to him. (Potter reference justified since Ralph Fiennes played Michael Berg in the film adaptation!) I wanted to go to the characters and say, "I understand you,buddy, and I get why you are what you are! Whether what you did was right or wrong isn't the question. I understand the reasons behind it."


Yes, Hanna was vain and foolish, even dumb and creepy and Michael behaved like an overgrown, cold and indifferent moron most of the times then regretted not doing what he should have done time and again but I understood them. I didn't like them but I don't hate them either! Their characters were very human, prone to human follies and failures.
This wasn't something any book has ever made me feel before. It's either too goo or too bad for me. This one was a perfect balance.

Another thing that struck me as really important was how powerful the imagery was despite the simplicity of the language. The sentences are neither exceptionally deep nor as philosophical as the blurb claims them to be but despite this, they are VERY powerful, a feat that only a gifted translator could possess even though I still believe the original must be much better!

I am still not sure whether the Reader would make it to my favorites list but if you ask me about what kind of a read it is, then, in the words of the man who picked it up for me: "It is NOT a book to be missed at any cost! I'll give it to you for whatever you have but DO NOT MISS IT!" (I'm glad you did, James!)

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