Yea! I’m another book well-read!
I really enjoyed reading this book. It only took a couple of days because it’s very short. You could definitely tell it was a book in translation. Translated books just seem to have a whole different feel. Well, that probably depends on the language it’s translated from. I’ll say, European books have a particular feel that is different from, say, Latin American books or Japanese books.
Anyway, I know this was an Oprah book, and everybody eschews Oprah as being “unliterary”, but sometimes she nails it. This was definitely literary.
As a 15 year old, Michael Berg becomes violently ill on the doorstep of a building on his way home from school. A woman rescues him and escorts him home where he is diagnosed with Hepatitis (!) and spends the next 6 months in bed. When he gets well, he goes to say thank you and quickly finds himself in an intimate relationship with Hannah, a 36 year old woman.
After their relationship ends, he finds himself at her trial for crimes committed when she was a guard for the SS during World War II. The Hannah he sees portrayed by the prosecution is not the person he remembers and he can’t understand why she doesn’t defend herself. Then he figures out her secret. If you don’t know what it is, I won’t be telling you here.
I gotta say, I didn’t particularly care for Hannah, but that’s okay because it wasn’t told like I was supposed to love her. Take it or leave it, that’s how it was.
I think I understand why this is on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. All things Nazi are understandably emotional, but this one is told from enough distance to be clear-headed and to tell a different side of things, perhaps. Not a better one, just different.
So I’m thinking the book is The Reader?
Explanation: Maybe everybody but me sees a picture of the book. I tend to read this surreptitiously at work and the pictures are blocked, so if the title isn’t in the text, I’m clueless.
I agree that it was definitely literary, and while I “got” it, I couldn’t help but be creeped out by the whole older woman, young boy, Mary Kay LeTourneau thing going on. It just felt icky to me.
Maybe Hannah was the first Cougar?
I hadn’t really been interested in this book before because I tend to steer clear of books that are made into films but I have really enjoyed your review and will try and get a copy. Thanks!