The book is an intense examination of how we deal with the transgressions of past generations.. do we really spend time and
effort to truly understand circumtances and motivations behind those wrongdoings, or do we simply condemn in order to show
our indignation, and somehow try to salvage our collective guilt, try to make it into something less passive, less futile?
effort to truly understand circumtances and motivations behind those wrongdoings, or do we simply condemn in order to show
our indignation, and somehow try to salvage our collective guilt, try to make it into something less passive, less futile?
Michael is a young schoolboy of fifteen in post-war Germany, when he meets, and becomes enthralled by an older woman (Hanna). Their short, but intimate time together ends when Hanna mysteriously leaves town - next to be seen by Michael, years later, when she stands on trial for crimes committed during World War II. Michael is now torn between his love for her and his own guilt for loving someone accused of those atrocities.
The author theorizes how the holocaust was perpetrated by people who were essentially numb, they were acting not just because of orders given to them by others, but because these very acts had become a matter of routine, something that wasn't to be analyzed or to be given the slightest form of the most basic human consideration. He also links this same "numbness" to the victims, who witness these daily horrors as if anesthetized. The author absolutely does NOT consider the perpetrator and the victim in this case to be any way similar just because they share this detached perspective, but he does pose the question: "What would you have done?" No other question could be so simple in phrasing, yet draw such complex, raw introspection.
"The Reader" is also a painful love story, beautifully written (the translator - Carol Brown Janeway - should get a special mention) but without the cliches that sometimes characterize the narration of such romances. The story is written so economically, yet, with every word, every sentence, you, the reader, will be made to feel the characters' anguish, the torment of their memories, their struggle to come to terms with their moral breaches, and their attempt at pennance..
