The Reader

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book to read
Review: Touching, very well written. You get very emotionally involved with the characters. I highly recommend it for anyone. Anyone who has anything negative to say about the book missed the point of what the author was trying to convey.

Rating:
Summary: A provocative treatment of sin and redemption
Review: Schlink's terse, strong writing provides an edgy counterpoint to his almost-parable of the conflicts of love and honor. The reader is dragged rather unwillingly into the discussion of how, and whether or not, one can provide one's own redemptive act to 'pay' society back. Our women's literature group was sharply divided on whether or not we 'liked' this book--but all agreed that it was important and provocative.

Rating:
Summary: Great, insightful book
Review: Every bit as good as The Triumph and the Glory, Memoirs of a Geisha, or any of the other mega-hits of the summer, The Reader is very intriguing, I recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: a rich existential journey into the human psyche
Review: The Reader is a rich, haunting, existential novel that offers new insights into the human condition with each revisiting. It belongs on the same shelf as Albert Camus' The Stranger, Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death, and Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom. Its treatment of repression --- or numbed indifference -- as the pysche's defense against pain and horror is identical to that found in the film, The Pawnbroker. It's a book that resonates.

Rating:
Summary: A simple story, but dense in issues and themes.
Review: "The Reader" should be read not in comparison to other much more complex contemporary novels, but must be read by those who wish to have a break from such complexity. It is a simple story that Schlink tells: a love affair between a boy and a woman. Yet it is dense in issues and themes that Schlink presents subtly: secrets and deceptions, courage and fear, love and lust between two people, each having a different history, and each from a different time and place. Schlink does not force the reader to think about the issues now, but puts the ideas in the reader's head to drift and wallow, until they evaporate. Schlink asks the question: Could love be possible in such a context? An answer to this question is a re-examination of the reader's values and morals. For this, "The Reader" becomes a sparkling grain of sand in a vast, vast beach.

Rating:
Summary: Great Read!!
Review: This book is one of those you just cannot put down. This book contains intense joy and intense sorrow. It is like none other I have read. I would highly recommend it to all.

Rating:
Summary: A story you will remember
Review: This book stays with you after you finish. I find myself thinking back to the characters and turning the story over in my mind. A provocative book. Not light. I loved it.

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointed
Review: I read this book because of the attention that it received from Oprah. I cannot believe how much they went on about this book. I found it very boring and lost my interest right from the beginning. Because of what I heard on Oprah I kept reading hoping it would get better but it did not.

Rating:
Summary: Could it be ANY slower?
Review: I have very little free time to read books of pleasure and I am very disappointed that I chose this one to dive into. It was extremely difficult to finish due to the uneventful plot and extremely low character base. Who needs kleenex, try caffeine!!

Rating:
Summary: Rare Outstanding Literature
Review: This book was a page turner for me. The author and translator did a good job of showing the effects of child sexual abuse on a young man. As much as she gave him early high confidence with girls, he was never able to have a successful relationship with a woman when he grew up. I will be looking for more books written by Bernhard Schlink. To the reviewer that wondered about the baths, In Germany tubs are considered similiar to jacuzzis here.