Sunday 24 May 2009

"The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink

On a recent trip, I ran through my own stack of books and borrowed a copy of "The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink.

To describe the story in too much detail would be to spoil it. In short, this is a story about a romance (of a sort) set against the backdrop of the collective societal guilt in Germany following the holocaust. The characters are believable and human, and the story on the whole is enjoyable. I suppose I prefer other particular flavors of moral ambiguity a bit better (the film "He Got Game" by Spike Lee, for example), but on the whole I thought the material was interesting and well handled.

As with many translated works, it's a little difficult to get into the flow of the novel, the prose just doesn't sing or grab your attention in quite the same way. Regardless, it's a very quick read, and worth a look.

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