"The Reader," a book by German author Bernhard Schlink, is the story of Michael, a fifteen year old boy who has a sexual relationship with Hannah, a woman twice his age. Many years after the affair, the boy find out that the woman was a guard in a Nazi concentration camp. This woman is played by Kate Winslet in the motion picture version of the book and is now nominated for an Academy Award. Dani and I haven't seen the movie.
I decided to read the book because I was interested in seeing how the Holocaust was understood in a best-selling contemporary novel. While I was not pulled into the story being told (the translation was a bit rough), the psychological damage caused to Michael by his relationship is remarkable. However, his transformation into an aloof social misfit seems to be more of a function of his affair at a young age rather Hanna's war crimes. Indeed, Michael is unable to relate to those around him even before Hanna's true identity is revealed. By today's legal standards, Michael is a victim of a sexual crime and, to me, this is what the story is about. Hanna's role in the Holocaust seems almost secondary.
While Schlink expends considerable energy describing the social upheavals of 1968 and Michael's effort to "understand" Germany's shamed past, this story is primarily about sexual abuse. Perhaps my disappointment with the book is rooted in my expectation that I would find an answer to the "Why?" that surrounds the Holocaust, a venture that will always leave a person empty and confused.
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