#bernardschlink

     “The next night I fell in love with her. I could barely sleep, I was yearning for her, I dreamed of her, thought I could feel her until I realized that I was clutching the pillow or the blanket.”

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THIS BOOK. I have seen the film adaptation of The Reader with Kate Winslet and absolutely loved it but the book goes far beyond it. I’m talking universes and universes beyond it. The narrative is gripping and emotive and the short chapters meant I literally could not put the book down. In fact, I read it in just under two days.

Schlink’s novel not only deals with an intense, sexual relationship between Michael Berg - a young boy of 15 and Hanna Schmitz - an older woman of 36 who particularly enjoys being read to, but it also deals with the difficulties post-war German generations experienced in terms of handling and understanding the Holocaust. How easy was it for people living in post-war Germany to come to terms with the past? How easy was it for people to approach the older generation, the generation that witnessed, or in some cases took part in the atrocities? How easy is it to grasp that someone you were once passionately in love with is now involved in a court trial to do with this particular, horrific event in our history?

The book is presented to us in three parts, each of which represent a different period of Michael Berg’s life. The story is told to us by Michael himself which enables us to gain an insight into his own head and learn about his feelings of both intense love, but at the same time intense hate.