Home

Completed	04 May 2009
Title	The Reader
Author	Bernhard Schlink
Published	1995
Quote	"'What do you think?' My mother turned to my father. He set his knife and fork down on his plate, leaned back, and folded his hands in his lap. He said nothing and looked thoughtful, the way he always did when my mother talked to him about the children or the household. As usual, I wondered whether he was really turning over my mother's question in his mind, or whether he was thinking about work. Maybe he did try to think about my mother's question, but once his mind started going, he could only think about work. He was a professor of philosophy, and thinking was his life----thinking and reading and writing and teaching. "Sometimes I had the feeling that all of us in his family were like pets to him. The dog you take for a walk, the cat you play with and that curls up in your lap, purring, to be stroked----you can be fond of them, you can even need them to a certain extent, and nonetheless the whole thing----buying pet food, cleaning up the cat box, and trips to the vet----is really too much. Your life is elsewhere. I wish that we, his family, had been his life."
Review	I saw this movie when it came out, at Christmastime, with my friends, Jay and Diane. The movie was fine, although disturbing in parts. What I couldn't understand in the movie was how and why the guy, Michael, could let Hanna, his old girlfriend, go away to prison when he full well knew the secret that would set her free. The movie left too many unanswered questions. So, I went down to my public library here in this sleepy little Colorado mountain town, and checked out the book. I was hoping that the book would delve deeper and unwrap some of the plot that I feared was hidden in the movie. I quickly found that the book and movie were one in the same. Kudos to the screenwriter for following the book so well. I always appreciate it when they do that, instead of creating a movie version that vaguely resembles the writer's original vision. But the accurate screenwriting meant that the book wouldn't inevitably answer my questions, the biggest of which involved Michael and his reluctance to save Hanna's life. I just couldn't understand why he wouldn't speak up at Hanna's trial, why he wouldn't tell the judge that Hanna was illiterate and therefore would have been unable to write the report that got her into so much hot water. In the book, Michael does, actually, feel compelled to help Hanna during the trial. "I did go to the presiding judge after all. I couldn't make myself visit Hanna. But neither could I endure doing nothing.....Why did I find it unendurable to do nothing? I told myself I had to prevent a miscarriage of justice. I had to make sure justice was done, despite Hanna's lifelong lie, justice both for and against Hanna, so to speak. But I wasn't really concerned with justice. I couldn't leave Hanna the way she was, or wanted to be. I had to meddle with her, have some kind of influence and effect on her, if not directly then indirectly." The thing is, Michael goes to the effort of securing a meeting with the presiding judge. Michael sits there and talks shop with him for awhile. But Michael never speaks up about Hanna and her secret. Michael never saves her, even when he was offerred the perfect opportunity to do so. He departs the judge's office no better than when he'd arrived. What gives? Is this Michael's way of cruelly hurting Hanna, for getting her back for leaving town abruptly when he was fifteen? Because of Michael, Hanna spends the next eighteen years in prison. This book was a good read, and an easy read, but I did not respect the Micheal character at all. It seems to me that Hanna took the moral high ground, after all. And Michael should be ashamed of himself.

For next book review, please click here.