![]() ![]() It is good in its own right, but all the surprises have been revealed if you have already watched the movie. If you have seen the movie version of ‘The Reader’, I don’t know whether I should recommend the book to you. I wish things had turned out differently. Hanna is a beautiful, haunting heroine and I will never forget her. But inspite of that, the ending was still heartbreaking. I thought that as I knew the story already, the book wouldn’t affect me that much. The book also mentions many German books and writers – Intrigues and Love by Schiller, Schnitzler, Heller, Fontane, Heine Morike, Kafka, Frisch, Johnson, Bachmann, Lenz – one can make a ‘TBR’ list out of it □ The things about Bernhard Schlink’s prose in ‘Homecoming’ that I liked very much were all there in ‘The Reader’ – the deceptively simple prose which hides the depth of the philosophical ideas and questions he addresses, the insightful observations on different things, the quotable quotes in every chapter. ![]() It also leaves many clues to the central mystery which I don’t remember the movie doing. The reasoning behind Hanna’s reluctance to reveal her secret is also better explained in the book. The book is good with respect to the philosophical discussions which are explored through the narrator’s voice, which is difficult to do in a movie. The movie was good in terms of creating a visual picture of the story and saying things which cannot be said in words. But if I stick my neck out and make the comparison, I would say that the movie and the book were good in different ways. With our memory being unreliable most times, I would take my own comparison with a pinch of salt. Which one is better – the movie or the book? I saw the movie a few years back when it came out and I can only talk about what I remember now about the impression the movie created on me at that time. That is one of the problems of seeing the movie version before reading the book. ![]() When I read the book and the parts about Hanna, Kate Winslet’s face kept coming to my mind. The movie stays more or less faithful to the book with some minor liberties to the screenplay. What I would like to say after reading the book is this. I am not going to bore you with the plot outline of the story, as you have probably seen the movie version of ‘The Reader’ (for which Kate Winslet won an Oscar). So when German Literature Month arrived this year I added ‘The Reader’ to my ‘Must read’ list. I have wanted to read other books by him since then, especially his more famous book ‘The Reader’. I read Bernhard Schlink’s ‘Homecoming’ last year and liked it very much. ![]()
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