book #26

[realthog]

I'm not sure where I picked up Bernhard Schlink's The Reader (1995; translated -- well -- from the German by Carol Brown Janeway 1997) but I think it was fairly recently. What I do know is that I didn't spot one element of the cover until I'd got the book home: those dreaded words "Oprah's Book Club". I must have been looking at the quotes on the back, which use terms like "morally devastating" that imply the reader's in for for a thorough emotional scourging.

Well . . .

A 15-year-old youth, Michael, has a torrid months-long affair with a 36-year-old woman, Hanna. The liaison is not entirely a physical one, because almost more than anything else she enjoys it when he reads to her -- the classics, modern fiction, whatever comes to eye. Then, at an especially rocky moment in their relationship, she abruptly leaves town. He has no idea where she's gone to; but a few years later, now a law student, he attends the trial of some war criminals and recognizes Hanna among their number. It is only at this stage that he also realizes something which has been thunderingly obvious to the reader since fairly early on: that Hanna is illiterate and too ashamed to admit it. Once she's been sent off to jail for a long term, he gets into the habit of recording cassettes of himself reading stuff, so that she can enjoy great books in her cell. And then . . .

I found myself pretty unharrowed by the tale, alas. I might have been able to become more involved with characters and scenario had this been a novelette or (feasibly) novella; as it is, there seem to be longish tracts of text where nothing much is happening except the narrator's not terribly original philosophizing.

A pity.

Comments

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

We had six copies of this book when we first bought the shop (the result of someone overbuying for a book club that never came through). After much toil, we've sold two. *sigh*

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Well, I bet you didn't sell them both to the same customer . . .

I shouldn't joke. It really is not a bad little book. I just found myself unmoved by it. And, if this novel fails to affect the reader emotionally, there's not much left by way of story to make up the difference, as it were.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

The Reader sounds as if it might have been an engaging plot, except I have a hard time with stories about, er, mature people (I use the term loosely) seducing youngsters, especially these days -- what with the media reports regarding the Texas FLDS compound blitzing us at every turn.

Nabokov did it best with Lolita. Hard act to follow, that one.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Nabokov did it best with Lolita."

Hum, yeah, hum.

The point of Lolita, as I recall (and it's a long, long time since I read the book), is that, while Humbert is the adult and thereby supposedly the one in control of the situation, in reality Lolita is the puppeteer, pulling his strings; i.e., the adult, despite her lack of years.

In The Reader the setup is a bit different. Michael's certainly old enough, in every sense of the description, to have the affair, primarily because he's not really old enough to participate fully in the emotional aspects of it. He's not going to be harmed in any way by it (although the book implies that he might be affected in later relationships by the fact that his first lover was so overwhelmingly competent, and leading).

Thing is, really, that the book's not about the affair. It's about the affair's very attenuated aftermath,

Hey, The Reader must have something to offer -- it's not every book that'd have me wittering at this sort of length!

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

I don't quite see Humbert as much Lolita's hapless puppet, as much as I view him as a delusional narcissist who at last finds himself with the perfect catalyst for acting out his fantasies -- a damaged twelve year old girl who has already been poisoned by the venom of sexual abuse, and is therefore fair game, as it were. Humbert fails to detect her dynamics because he is blind to his own. The irony here is that Lolita's mother set her up for exploitation years before Humbert ever arrived on the scene.

Yes, it does sound like you got more involved with The Reader than you realized. ;)

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

*butting in on a favorite topic*

I found Nabokov's language in Lolita extraordinarily beautiful, despite the questionable subject matter. If you're at all inclined to read it again, I'd recommend the audio book (unabridged) read by Jeremy Irons. It's ncredible.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

Lolita is exceptional, one the most brilliantly written novels out there.

The audio version delivered by Jeremy Irons must be mesmerizing!

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Irons brought whole nuances of meaning that I've missed reading it myself. The difference that a real performer can bring, to pull you inside the skin of the character. Complete empathy and sympathy with and for Humbert Humbert.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

Nabokov completely took me off guard with language, writing from the pov of the offender, thus rendering him as sympathetic, developmentally arrested at a tender age, during which time he fell in love for the first and only time in his life, save for Lolita. Lolita is indeed one the best depictions of the unreliable narrator I think I've ever read, and truly tragic.

I am curious regarding Lolita's life as an adult, a sequel written in her pov.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

All of this having been said about Lolita, The Reader is not in any sense comparable with that novel: it's not about the affair, or about the fact that the two lovers were of such different ages, or any of that. The latter two of its three parts are what's important; the love affair is merely part of the setup for them.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"I don't quite see Humbert as much Lolita's hapless puppet, as much as I view him as a delusional narcissist who at last finds himself with the perfect catalyst for acting out his fantasies -- a damaged twelve year old girl who has already been poisoned by the venom of sexual abuse, and is therefore fair game, as it were."

Hm . . . That's a fair reading, too. Guess Lolita is another novel that succeeds in the sense that it makes people discuss it . . .

[quilterbear.livejournal.com]

I have The Reader in my TBR stash, and have picked it up several times and put it back down. Mine was pre-Oprah, I guess, as it didn't have that sticker/label on it. For me, those books tend to be the kiss of death except for the first one, which I really loved (Deep End of the Ocean, which started me reading fiction again).

[realthog.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I think I've read one or two other books that were Oprah choices, although I can't swear to it. But, as you say, it does seem to be something of the kiss of death when you see the tag.