Anyone read The Reader..

[bundle]

..by Bernhard Schlink?

Yes, but many years ago! It was very good in a rather miserable sort of way IIRC.

Yes. I agree w/Italian Job's description.

It's very good.

Yes, I agree with ItalianJob, too. Have you read it? Don't want to discuss with spoiling elements if you haven't.

first half v light,the second grim half came as a bit of a shock. v compelling though.

i loved it

on reflection, I enjoyed it a lot, it's made me think a great deal about morals, power, chains of command, responsibility for your actions and other Big Things

a really good and interesting read I though and I'm not one for serious books on the whole.

I heard an interesting angle on it on Radio 4, can't remember which prog - it's one of very few books which deal with an older woman seducing a young boy, Lolita-style, and - the speaker contended - ruining his life, or at least his future sex life. Could never then be satisfied with a younger woman. Novelist John Irving says the same thing happened to him.

that came across really strongly for me too fauve, her actions ruined his life, hers and those of all those poor women she came into contact with in the camps..especially those women who burned to death in the church

John Irving is one twisted person.

I know from personal experience, unfortunately.

It was haunting.

You know how some books haunt you?

That one did me for a while.

I felt sorry for her, though. Maybe I shouldn't have. I suppose she was a creature of her circumstances.

I felt sorry for her, too, Fauve, which I think is the mark of a really gifted writer.

One of my favourite books. I've read some of his other stuff too, and it's the same spare style that I really like.

Is that spare style typical of German writers? I'm currently reading Ice Moon by Jan Costin Wagner, which is similarly laconic, if not more so. Don't know how much is lost in translation, either, as it were. Maybe a good translator would join the sentences up more

No the tone is similarly laconic in German. I think it is quite typical for German novels.

Read it a couple of years ago. Don't remember much of it which says it for me. Great reviews from the critics though ..

Thanks, emkana - I think what I meant was that a translator could make these books more "English-reader-friendly" by joining up sentences so that they were slightly less staccato. Another example, although not German, are the novels of Henning Mankell, which I find so stark as to be just about unreadable. You know - changes in the emotional state of characters come like bolts out of the blue, and then something completely different happens. No embellishment whatsoever. A bit like chintz and Ikea, really.