Books
by Bernhard Schlink
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Flights of Love |
These unsentimental and haunting stories explore the search for love in a world where the past casts a dark shadow: the impossibility of being a German in love with an American Jew; the mistrust between East and West Berliners; a widower coming to terms with his dead wife's secret affair..... Schlink's characters debate, socialise, drink coffee, play chess and live in clean little towns, but nothing is that easy and the German perspective is fascinating.
(Victoria Grey-Edwards - bwl 17 February 2003) |
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The Reader |
A 15 year-old boy has hepatitis, and one day on the street becomes extremely ill. A young woman comes to his rescue, takes him to her apartment, helps to clean him up and then delivers him home. We learn what happens when he has recovered and takes her a bunch of flowers, and then again much later. It is a riveting and intriguing story written in two quite separate parts.
(Polly Sams Plant - bwl 44 February 2008) |
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The Reader |
Michael Berg, 15, meets Hanna, aged 36. They embark on an affair which does not last long but will stay with and colour Michael's life forever. But Hanna has secrets, which Michael only becomes aware of much later, and he becomes involved in philosophical questions which also influence his life choices. The book challenges our feelings about the Holocaust and our own personal reactions to some of the questions it raises. Very moving and challenging.
(Julie Higgins - bwl 14 July 2002) |
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The Reader |
A fifteen year old boy is drawn into an intense relationship with an older woman which will haunt him forever. For this is 1950s Germany and Hanna has a past which she, and ultimately he, cannot avoid. Their story is a metaphor for a post-war generation trying to confront and understand how quite ordinary people went along with and took part in the Holocaust. Not a comfortable read but one that lingers long in the mind.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 27 December 2004) |
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