Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council

The Reader

By Bernard Schlink

I thought the writing was very good, clear and unadorned and excellently translated though the philosophy, at times, needed to be read twice! I read this painful story with growing commitment and in the end found it deeply moving. I believed in this clever rather humourless boy's emotional ties with an unlikely woman, I believed in Hanna's unimaginative ideas about what constituted an employee's duty and in the concealment of - to her - quite different reason for shame. The examination of conscience by Germans during the post Nazi era is the underlying theme of Hanna's trial with which the author grapples. A touching and powerful book 5/5

Schlink writes a heart rending story which captivates the unexpected relationship between an educated teenager and a lonely 36 year old woman. Michael's "readings" give Hanna a glimpse of a different world. Their intense lovemaking suddenly ceases when Hanna disappears. Later Hanna's trial gives the reader a stark picture of the Holocaust. Hanna's role was her way of offering comfort to the victims. The story is well told but extremely sad. The whole of Michael's life seems to have been scarred by this experience 4/5

I did not like this book at all but I did finish it. There are a lot of questions to be asked. Is the story told from a personal experience? What drives people to do what they do and under what guise do they justify it? A lot of moral issues to discuss 2/5