Homecoming

Starred review from October 15, 2007
Schlink’s first novel, The Reader
(1997), became a U.S. bestseller after it was an Oprah pick. That book, and his next, a short story collection, raised moral questions about Germany right after WWII; his latest, following two crime novels, takes up that line of inquiry and may be his most powerful and disquieting. The title refers to a pulp novel discovered in fragments by the narrator, Peter Debauer, and to Debauer’s quest to find the book’s pseudonymous author, who seems to have an uncanny knowledge of the conditions and landmarks of Debauer’s own youth in postwar Germany. This mysterious work, with similarities to The Odyssey
, offers tantalizing clues to a deeper mystery, that of the identity of Debauer’s father, reported dead after the war. Debauer’s youth, failed career and love life play out against authoritatively detailed scenes of Nazi degeneracy, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the stark differences between East and West Germany. As in his previous works, Schlink’s protagonist is a flawed character who elicits the reader’s understanding but not affection—until the poignant denouement.

December 15, 2007
Schlink's phenomenal "The Reader" is a hard act to follow, and while this new work doesn't quite measure up, it's still very, very good. Raised in post-World War II Germany by a tight-lipped single mother who consents to send him off to Switzerland each summer to visit his paternal grandparents, Peter Debauer jostles modestly through life. In childhood, he became fascinated with a set edited by his grandfather called "Novels for Your Reading Pleasure and Entertainment" and particularly with the story of a returning soldier that has poignant personal echoes. Tracking down the apartment where he believes the story took places leads him not only to a complicated affair with a woman named Barbara but to questions about his father, presumably lost during the war. The truth turns out to be unsettlingly different, and Peter ends up in New York on a mission. Neatly tucked into the present, the slow unfolding of Peter's past is intriguing, and the novel climaxes with some frighteningly intense scenes. The one surprise is that the language can sometimes sound routine, even clichéd, which may be the translation. Nevertheless, this is definitely recommended for all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 9/15/07.]Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2007
Peter Debauer, who grew up fatherless in postwar Germany, becomes obsessed with a homecoming novel that he read as a youth, in which a German soldier returns home from a prison camp in Siberia to find his wife remarried. The deeper Debauer digs, the closer to home the story hits, both literally and emotionally. The trail leads him across the Atlantic to track down the author whom he suspects may be an ex-Nazi, a brilliant political science professor, or even the father he thought had died in the war. Schlinks story certainly boasts multiple, compelling layers of meaning that demand close attention: examinations of the specter of National Socialism; an allegorical reworking of The Odyssey; meditations upon morality and social law; and, not least, lingering issues of fatherhood and abandonment. Perhaps overly ambitious, that all adds up to far too much ballast to support its own weight. At its core, though, is a story that wants to be about discovering love, and coming home, and finding what is lost, written with too much in mind.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)