The Reader

It's a number of years since I read a novel at a single sitting. This month's book club choice is The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, and since I'm off work sick today (don't worry, I'm much better and intending to return tomorrow) I settled down in the conservatory this afternoon to make a start on it.

Two hours and fifteen minutes later, I've finished it. I can't remember the last time a book gripped me like this one has (although last month's choice - The Catcher in the Rye - came close), or was so easy to read and yet so fulfilling. It truly deserves the epithet 'page turner' that many books are given these days, yet so few truly deserve.

Schlink's use of language is extraordinary (and I suppose a nod to his translator, Carol Brown Janeway, is also in order). Descriptive without being banal or tedious; evocative without being slushy; thoughtful without being preachy. It's a novel with more than one story to tell; more, even, than the three parts it is divided into. The story of a fifteen-year-old Kid and his surprising, beautiful yet ultimately tortured relationship with Hanna, the 30-something woman he meets accidentally. The story of how he becomes a lawyer, and attends Hanna's trial as a Holocaust war criminal. And the story of how he reaches out to Hanna during her eighteen year incarceration and is denied any but the most ephemeral closure to their relationship, which has marked his entire life one way or another.

"Then I looked at Hanna's handwriting and saw how much energy and struggle the writing had cost her. I was proud of her. At the same time, I was sorry for her, sorry for her delayed and failed life, sorry for the delays and failures of life in general."

I found this one of the most moving passages of the book. The delays and failures of life in general. How that must resonate with any reader over the age of ... what? What age do you need to be to know that life, while it can sometimes provide transcendent joys and satisfactions, is also a story of delays and failures?

And I'm reminded that failure only exists on those occasions where you do not get back up and try again. That no matter your age, or past, or experience, there is always another try. There may be yet more delay, but you only fail when you stop trying.