The Reader and Homecoming
by Bernhard Schlink
Sceptre, HK$104
One writer not feeling the downturn is Bernhard Schlink. Thanks to Stephen Daldry's movie adaptation of The Reader, he has seen both that novel and his latest, Homecoming, published in paperback in the past few weeks. Already an international hit, The Reader begins in 1958 with an affair between Michael Berg, 15, and Hanna Schmidt, 36. When Michael falls ill with what turns out to be hepatitis, Hanna nurses the stricken boy. One day, the lady vanishes, only to reappear years later as a defendant at a war crimes trial. A guard in Auschwitz, Hanna is accused of being involved in the deaths of a number of Jewish women. Now a law student, Michael finds himself re-enacting their former relationship - minus the sex and bathing, that is. Homecoming lacks The Reader's narrative cohesion and moral ambiguity. Once again there is plenty of reading and plenty of war: our narrator, Peter Debauer, becomes obsessed with the story of a prisoner-of-war called Karl, whose wife leaves him for another man. Desperate to find out what happened, Peter is drawn into Karl's story. Try The Reader first.