![]() ![]() He has to come to terms with the fact that his lover was an SS guard at a camp for women prisoners, 300 of whom died in a fire in a church on the death march from Auschwitz, and her illiteracy is such a secret shame she accepts responsibility for a report on the fire rather than admit illiteracy. When the denouement of her Nazi past is disclosed in such a shocking manner to Michael when he turns up at her war crimes trial it's a life-changer for him. It's an intense relationship, excluding all others, and its eroticism precludes too much information. The title of the book comes from Michael's role in their relationship, that of her reader, when he reads aloud the German classics, in a post-coital haze, and this pattern shapes their encounters. He knows little or nothing about her other than her work as a tram conductor, and her secret of illiteracy is only discovered by him much later on. The initial meeting leads to revisits and the start of a torrid affair. Michael's whole life is changed and affected by his encounter with the older woman who is Hanna, whom he meets when he is sick near her apartment and who takes him in to care for him. I remember the book left an impression as a powerful read, which has stayed with me in its general context rather than the detail. It captured my impressions of the book's atmosphere - lyrical and very evocative of the era in which it is set, which is post-war 1950s Germany when Michael is a teenager and meets Hanna and their affair starts, right to the war trials of the 1960s which are underway when he's a law student. It was one of those rare films that was faithful to the book. Thanks to Lorna for recommending it.Īlso I saw the DVD of the film with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes a year or two ago. ![]() I adored that book, as I did his last book, The Corrections, and as I'd read The Reader before, I didn't feel too guilty. I have to confess that I read this book a few years ago and didn't get a chance or time to re-read it - it was a library copy and I know it is still in the library here but I haven't had a minute to get back there- and I also was being distracted by reading the marvellous new book by Jonathan Franzen, Freedom.
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