Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

Time to discuss.

Charity, I noticed your review of this book says you REALLY didn't like it, but you also commented that you might re-read it. It's been 16 years now since you read it, right? Did you go back and re-read it? If so, have your thoughts changed?

I enjoyed this book. The most overwhelming sense I got from it was one of darkness. The forbiddance of their relationship then the revelation of who she was and what she was hiding really added to that. I liked where it went and it ended with me liking it more than I thought I was going to as I moved through it.

The Reader ending up being a 5* read for me, realistically it’s probably a 4* as I found it hard going getting through the relationship at the beginning. Not because it was scandalous, but I just wasn’t interested in it. I found the court scenes and the ending really got me thinking about who, how and even if, people should be punished for going along with a regime? How responsible are they? How indoctrinated are they and how can you tell? What is justice?

Not really wishing to bring it up as a debate, but just to sum up why it is 5* to me. I still find myself thinking of it, for example when people are discussing recent news of a girl wanting to come back into the country (I’m from England) and I’m not saying that they are in anyway connected, but just that it made me think. I do not know the person at all so what if my feelings about her coming back or not coming back are unjust. I’m only told what the news tells me and only hear other people’s opinions, not hers.

I keep going backwards and forwards whether to include the above section, as again I don’t want the book review to be hinged on recent events, rather to demonstrate how it still has me thinking. It is probably the first book I have read in this style (I don’t read any courtroom type novels and certainly nothing to do with war criminals) so this is why this book stays with me, and influences my reactions to questions of justice and guilt, particularly those relating to regimes. I’m really glad I’m not in any position to have to decide one way or another.

I can see your point about that line between "wrong doing" and "following orders." It's something I think about a lot. And current events are definitely relevant. Often times, history will be the judge of that difference. Things that we do today that are only controversial could be considered crimes against humanity if/when the paradigm shifts and perspective changes and history books are written.

I'm glad people are responding to this one already, and bringing up some of the moral questions this book raises. I found it at a used book store 5 or 6 years ago and read this before I actually started officially doing the book list.

I personally rated it 5 stars because the way it was written had me intrigued and moved in many directions and questioning a lot of the things Laura already mentioned.

However, after reading some critical readings of the novel, I could completely understand why other people would hate it. One criticism that has struck with me that I think is worth discussing- despite my love of the book- is whether Hanna's "illiteracy" and shame around it really works as an allegory of the average person's culpability in the Third Reich. Her trial and testimony about being a guard indicate that she would rather accept blame for being evil than admit her ignorance because she's so shamed by it. However, I feel like historically- both in the Third Reich and in general when people are charged with crimes- the opposite is true. People are more likely to plead ignorance than admit they knowingly did wrong regardless of whether it was out of malevolence, or apathy and going along with the flow of society.

Despite this glaring weakness (in my opinion), I still rate the book highly for many reasons, including that I think it really encapsulates the idea of the "banality of evil" coined by Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt about the Eichmann trial. The way Hanna's motivations and testimony about being a guard are so amoral and detached, and about her job prospects, really encapsulates how evil is so often propelled by "normal" people who have not considered how these regimes impact the marginalized (or are not moved to do anything about it), and not just actively malicious cartoonish villains. It paints a complex but ultimately more horrifying tableau of how horror happens that I think is a crucial warning in our current political climate.

I can see what you are saying in what you are calling a weakness in the story. It seems unlikely that I would ever have that much pride, or shame over not being able to read, to allow myself to serve such a prison sentence. However I think that just really shows how strongly she felt about the fact that she was illiterate. It must have been a very very strong shame.

I just realized I haven't read or posted to this discussion yet. I finished The Reader early (Jan 26). It was a 5* read for me also. When it moved to the trial part, I guess because of the format of the story, I was reminded of the Agatha Christie short, Witness for the Prosecution although that was based on a murder trial, not war crimes.
I thought it was a really well-told story overall with strongly depicted main characters. It worked in coming-of-age, romance, and war genres. I wasn't thrilled with the ending- I saw the film long ago and didn't remember how it ended.

I gave The Reader 4 stars. For about the first half of the book, I felt like it was a 5-star book, but then I made the mistake of reading some of the reviews on Goodreads, and quite a few of them HATED the book, so then I started finding (looking for?) problems with it, and then knocked it down to 4 stars. That's still better than a lot of the reviewers thought it was, though! For me, this was a forget-all-of-your-responsibilities-for-the-day book; not many of my chores or tasks got done while I was reading it.

I enjoyed Michael's contemplations and ponderings about the war, the Holocaust, the camp guards' roles, the villagers' roles during the Holocaust, and the later generations' responsibilities to history. Like Sean and Laura, the question of "following orders" vs. "wrong doing" (and even the question of the villagers watching things happen [silence means approval] vs. being too scared to do anything) made me stop and think during the trial scenes.

And I liked the story: yes, the 15-year-old boy getting it on with the 36-year-old woman is a little overdone, but at least it wasn't done poorly here; if the trial hadn't been included in most synopses of the book, I would have been surprised by it; I was surprised by the twist of Hanna's illiteracy; and I was certainly surprised by the ending, and really liked the way it was handled over the last few chapters.

I was really disappointed with this book. I had high hopes but it just seemed really boring and uninteresting. I was uncomfortable with the subject matter in the first part but I continued because I thought perhaps it would be complex and deep in its treatment of moral issues and emotions, but I felt like it just stayed flat and boring all the way through.

I read it about 5 years ago and I don't remember a ton about it, but I do think I agree with Phoenix in that I remember I found it kind of boring.

It is one that I think about picking back up and seeing if my opinions have changed over time, and it is a short book.

I found this book to be a fast and easy read, but, considering the powerful subject matter, I was completely underwhelmed by the tone of the narrator. When I started reading, I felt that there was all the emotion of a shopping list. At first, I wondered if that was the fault of the translator, but as I read further, I realized that one of the themes of the book was numbness and the post-war generation wishing to distance themselves from the "sins of the fathers". Some quotes:

"The prosecutors made an effort to keep up and display the same level of attack day after day. But they didn't succeed, at first because the facts and their outcome as laid out at the trial horrified them so much, and later because the numbness began to take hold. The effect was strongest on the judges and the lay members of the court. During the first weeks of the trial they took in the horrors... with visible shock or obvious efforts at self-control. Later their faces returned to normal; they could smile and whisper to one another... The other students kept being horrified all over again. They only came to the trial once a week, and each time the same thing happened: the intrusion of horror into daily life. I, who was in court every day, observed their reactions with detachment.

It was like being a prisoner in the death camps who survives month after month and becomes accustomed to the life, while he registers with an objective eye the horror of the new arrivals: registers it with the same numbness that he brings to the murders and deaths themselves. All survivor literature talks about this numbness, in which life's functions are reduced to a minimum, behavior becomes completely selfish and indifferent to others, and gassing and burning are everyday occurences. In the rare accounts by perpetrators, too, the gas chambers and ovens become ordinary scenery, the perpetrators reduced to their few functions and exhibiting a mental paralysis and indifference, a dullness that makes them seem drugged or drunk. The defendants seemed to me to be trapped still, and forever, in this drugged state, in a sense petrified in it.

Even then, when I was preoccupied by this general numbness, and by the fact that it had taken hold not only of the perpetrators and victims, but of all of us, judges and lay members of the court, prosecutors and recorders, who had to deal with these events now..."

"[I] discovered that it is the book that creates distance. It does not invite one to identify with it and makes no one sympathetic, neither the mother nor the daughter, nor those who shared their fate in various camps... It never gives the barracks leaders, the female guards, or the uniformed security force clear enough faces or shapes for the reader to be able to relate to them, to judge their acts for better or worse. It exudes the very numbness I have tried to describe before."

"At first I was embarassed to meander home through the Alsatian villages looking for a restaurant where I could have lunch. But my awkwardness was not the result of real feeling, but of thinking about the way one is supposed to feel after visiting a concentration camp. I noticed this myself, shrugged, and found a restaurant..."

"I envied other students back then who had dissociated themselves from their parents and thus from the entire generation of perpetrators, voyeurs, and the willfully blind, accomodators and accepters, thereby overcoming perhaps not their shame, but at least their suffering because of the shame... Was their dissociation of themselves from their parents mere rhetoric: sounds and noise that were supposed to drown out the fact that their love for their parents made them irrevocably complicit in their crimes?"

I understand the numbness-- in our society today, people who witness the worst (police officers, ambulance drivers, firemen, ER doctors and nurses, crime scene technicians, coroners, jailers, social workers, etc) must build up a shell to keep themselves from becoming personally involved and destroyed by the things they see and hear. Some degree of numbness and distance is essential for the survival of the individual. The part I didn't understand was the flat aspect in the beginning of the book, where the narrator was a 15-year-old boy having an affair with an older woman. Part One of the book was narrated in real time-- the dissociation and numbness would have made sense if the narrator was recounting his past with Hanna, but there was no reason for that cloud to be hanging over young Michael's account.

It also struck me as odd that Michael didn't have any reaction when he realized that Hanna was one of the people on trial-- the evidence phase of the trial (and therefore the numbness) hadn't started yet, so I would have expected much more of a reaction from him. If I had discovered that a former lover was on trial charged with having been a serial killer, rapist, or some other behavior that had caused extreme pain and suffering to others, I fully believe that I would have had a very strong reaction to that information. Perhaps the author portrayed young Michael as being so removed from these situations in order to distance him from the reader?

I did feel some sympathy for Hanna when I realized that (view spoiler)[ she could not read, and the lengths she went to in her life to keep that fact hidden because she dreaded becoming the object of shame and ridicule.

I was also not surprised when Hanna committed suicide. As soon as I read the warden's statement to Michael that Hanna had refused to go outside to get acclimated before her release, I knew that she never intended to leave the prison. The cloud of shame, guilt, and blame that would have hung over her would have been unbearable. In the prison, she had purpose in her life, and a family of sorts. In the outside world she had nothing. (hide spoiler)]

I know that this is a bestselling book with a lot of awards and prestige, and even though I [think I] understand the author's intent in writing in such a flat affect, I still don't feel much for it-- it has succeeded in distancing and dissociating itself from me. I don't think I'll be rereading this one.

A book I read some years ago that I can still vividly remember. I loved the short sentences. Lots of thought provoking issues. 'The Reader' is such a succinct title that helps one recall the main issue of this book. The sad, tragic story puts me off rereading it.

I've ordered a secondhand (translated) copy yesterday, as I'd been looking at the book every now and again, but it won't be here before the group read ends :-(

Booklovinglady wrote: "I've ordered a secondhand (translated) copy yesterday, as I'd been looking at the book every now and again, but it won't be here before the group read ends :-("

we will still be here... :)

I agree that the novel is written in an unemotional style. I have to think that was intentional on the author's part. This probably meets more disapproval/dislike from women readers, who usually want some emotion in their books.
There are nearly as many styles of writing fiction as there are authors, and I enjoy reading books in a variety of styles, as I think many others do. Incidentally, I just read A Dry White Season which is also written in a rather unemotional style; I thought The Reader a better book than that one.

PS: We have 2 Georges in the discussion now, so you have to look at the little pictures to differentiate us. Also, he's the (new) George and I'm the old one.

George wrote: "This probably meets more disapproval/dislike from women readers, who usually want some emotion in their books."

Although I read all group reads of this group, I normally don't reply to these topics, because my English is not that well.
However, I do feel the need to reply to this :) I do not want to attack you, George, but my feminist side is a bit upset when I read this sentence. (Although you use the word "usually")

I know a lot of female readers, with all different tastes. I know books that upset some people, men ánd women, where I had no problem with the hard style. I've read books recommended to me by men, that I found a bit too emotional. Tastes are too random to claim that women usually want some emotion in their books.

This said, the reason I feel attacked, is because I had the same feeling about this book as others mentioned: too distant and too unemotional. I have read another book by Bernard Schlink, and the writing style was the same, so I believe it is not an active choice, just how he writes.
This book tackled a lot of (heavy) themes, but did not at all deliver the punch. In my (Dutch) review I called the writing style "decent", and you don't create something special with a decent writing style. Especially when the book is so short you can't work out your ideas in a deep way. (I do believe an unemotional style is adapted to a book with a lot of ideas. This books SEEMS to have a lot of them, but in the end they are not worked out at all).

So I tend to agree with Suki, and I honestly believe it is not because I am a woman, in need of more emotion in my books ;)

I've read half of it by now (hope to finish it today or tomorrow) but personally I think it is great! So immensely complex... In the first part mention is made (if I remember correctly) of the ending of a marriage because one of the partners has a lover and the question is asked why the good times of the marriage can't be remembered as the marriage comes to an end, only the bad times seem to be remembered. It certainly set me thinking. And that was only one of the things, as the book is full of them, apart from the actual story I mean. So far I like it an awful lot.

Booklovinglady wrote: "I've read half of it by now (hope to finish it today or tomorrow) but personally I think it is great! So immensely complex... In the first part mention is made (if I remember correctly) of the endi..."

Haha Booklovinglady, if a book leads to such different opinions, then it must be a great book ;) Of course there are some good ideas in this book (I exaggerated a bit in my post), especially the ones about the guilt next generations have to bear made me thinking.

But overall, it left me quite unsatisfied in the end, with a feeling that another author could have gotten more out of it.

@Laurence
I'm used to liking books others don't like and vice versa, so don't let that disturb you 😉 I'll leave a review (in Dutch) in the Netherlands & Flanders group when I finished the book.

These past two days I’ve read a Dutch edition of The Reader (De voorlezer). What an incredibly good and impressive book! And so many things are said in so few pages... Last month I watched the film for the second time on television and it really made me want to read the book, so I bought a secondhand copy.

In The reader the first part (the book is divided into three parts) the affair of the 15-year-old Michael Berg and the 36-year-old Hanna Schmitz is described. Hanna thinks Michael is 17, by the way. In the second part the 22-year-old Michael sees Hanna at a trial he is following for his studies (view spoiler)[and discovers she is illiterate, which is the reason she likes it when people read to her (hide spoiler)]. The third part is about the influence of the trial (the conviction of Hanna) had on Michael. The book ends when Michael is about 50.

The book is very complex and drew my attention to several things. For instance, if I remember correctly, mention is made of the ending of a marriage because one of the partners has a lover; the question is then asked why the good times of the marriage can't be remembered as the marriage comes to an end, only the bad times seem to be remembered. Another question asked in the book is under what law people are to be judged after a significant change in power? The ‘old’ one or the ‘new’? And again another example which set me thinking: Does an executioner only do his job, the one he gets paid for? There are so many examples of things that set me wondering... Too many to mention (as I said, a very complex book 🙂)

A thing that never has happened to me while reading a book, was that while reading De voorlezer, I started wondering how I would have reacted when I had been either Michael or Hanna...

As to the remark that the book was 'unemotional' or 'distant', it didn’t strike me as such. But even if it were, personally I think it is necessary to treat a book with this subject matter in an unemotional voice. Apart from that, Michael feels like he is numb or ‘anesthesized’ (= in Dutch: ‘verdoofd’), so it might have been done on purpose.