Hania ElSolh ElSolh itibaren Manjiya, Uganda
Wanted a new series and enjoyed the Lord of the Rings type of novels. Robert Jordan had me on the edge of my seat with every page. The character descriptions were amazing and I found myself slowly slipping into the roles of Rand, Perrin, Mat and the others.
**I've changed the rating on this book, and my view of the story based on comments I read from other reviewers - especially a review by Chandra - which made me see the story from a new angle. The detachment in the narration that initially left me flat, I realize, is part of the story's impact - the character of Michael Berg could tell this story in no other way. So - thanks Chandra. This is one reason I very much like to read what other people think of stories. As a professor of literature who teaches students to "read" books from different angles and to consider other ways of "entering" stories, my "re-entering" The Reader based on someone else's interpretation of the same story is a perfect example of what I push my students to do among themselves - listen to each other and discuss their varying interpretations of the same texts in order to realize that there are DIFFERENT ways to read the same story, and then reflect on whether having heard those different interpretations has any impact on THEIR initial interpretation. Now I can show my students that this happens to me as well; I can safely say that I practice what I preach!! Thanks Chandra and the others who commented on Chandra's review - I thoroughly enjoyed the very thought-provoking discussion that ensued! -----------Original review I liked the story and was surprised by the ending, but maybe becase of all the hype over the book several years ago when it was one of Oprah's book club selections, and then the spasms that accompanied the movie version of it and Winslet's Oscar-winning turn as Hannah, I was perhaps expecting the book to be more . . . I don't know. I expected to be more emotionally drawn-in to the book. I did not see the movie purposely so that I could get a feel for the book before the visual medium of the movie. I will now watch the movie - and perhaps the movie will be more emotionally-satisfying. It's not that I didn't like the story or the characters or the shock of the situation and the ending (which I really wasn't expecting, so that did leave me surprised). It could be a result of the fact that the narration seems unemotional - told in first person from a character that never seems fully emotionally invested in the story, which is, of course, the narrator's whole characteristic. Michael Berg, the main character, states in the story time and time again that he doesn't "feel" anything about what's happened. And that comes through - the story, although told in first person, seems at a distance. So a reader ends up getting the "facts" of the story without ever emotionally-connecting with either the narrator or the story. And, ultimately, that may be the intention of the author (don't know if it reads the same way in German and if this is a quality of the translator herself, or if that detachment is also in the original German). If that is the case - this detachment - then readers of the story are put into the same "distancing" position as the spectators of Hannah's trial who observed without getting emotionally swept up - like Berg himself. In that case, the book's narration is brilliant. I like to be drawn in more into a story, however, and I think that's what left me a bit . . . flat.