[UNS]⋙ PDF Homecoming A novel Bernhard Schlink 9780375420917 Books

Homecoming A novel Bernhard Schlink 9780375420917 Books

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Homecoming A novel Bernhard Schlink 9780375420917 Books

At one level, an excellent description of how self interest and relativity intersect with ethical decision making and personal responsibility for outcomes. More practically, a well crafted story about a son in search of his father and how the father has influened (the son and the son's behavior; others). References to fascism, concept of evil, legal theory, Greek mythology, and Germany's reunification: all usefully incorporated. My goal was to read an excellent (translated) German novel. I am very glad I chose this one.


Tags : Homecoming: A novel [Bernhard Schlink] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The first novel by Bernhard Schlink since his international best seller The Reader, Homecoming </i>is the story of one man's odyssey and another man's pursuit. A child of World War II,Bernhard Schlink,Homecoming: A novel,Pantheon,0375420916,Children of disappeared persons;Fiction.,Soldiers;Germany;Fiction.,Children of disappeared persons,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Literary,German (Language) Contemporary Fiction,Germany,Literary,Soldiers

Homecoming A novel Bernhard Schlink 9780375420917 Books Reviews

I bought this because I loved The Reader by Schlink. This one is a much slower read, but it is still a powerful, intriguing, and very interesting story within a story. The first 50 pages could be deleted, but stick with it as there are many twists and turns and a surprising ending.
The action takes place in different ages and locales, so that it is not always easy to realize where a particular scene fits in in the overall thrust of plot However, it comes together as the central mysterious character uses all the other characters in a staged milieu.,
I just reviewed "Summer Lies" the book of short stories also by Bernhard Schlink. Like all his books, it was a great read. I recommend all the books by Schlink that are available in English -- he's a terrific writer.
It is classical in the sense that it uses Homer's ODYSSEY; it is modern in the sense that it is incorporates elements of deconstructionism. It is not an easy book to read, but the effort is worthwhile for the questions raised and the consciousness raising that it inspires.
The trilogy was so worthwhile reading ... I absolutely loved it!
The problem, I'm finding, with Herr Schlink, is a tendency to be too analytical. I enjoy reading existentialist literature to a point ... but when introspective questions begin to dominate the text, I start having my own doubts ... about why I'm reading the book. Homecoming is a well written story, but much more so at the start than toward the end. I also enjoy open-ended endings and perhaps it was my own confrontational nature that left me wanting at the end of Homecoming; wanting the confrontation and/or wanting to slap the protagonist. Ultimately, it's what forces me to give this one a 4 rather than a 5 star rating.

Definitely worth Reading, though ... so READ, amici ... READ ...
I found this novel by Bernhard Schlink, the author of "The Reader," to be both fascinating at points, slow at other points, and ultimately to have "punted" on the key element. Without spoiling the story, the central character, Peter, first appears as a child who travels each summer from his home in Germany to spend time with his paternal grandparents in Switzerland. He never knew his father who died in the war. The grandparents publish pulp fiction and provide him with ample scrap paper which contains pages from stories on one side. He is instructed to not read any of the story material. Ultimately, as an adult he does start to read some pages at random and becomes fascinated with the moral issues inherent in the fragments of one story. He becomes so fixated on tracking down the unknown author of this story that he devotes most of his activities as an adult to pursuing various leads. So, in part this is a detective story--the author is well known for several detective novels he has written, so this is his natural genre and he is quite good at it, for the suspense builds as the reader wonders if he will ever successfully put all the pieces together. It also develops a nice love story dimension, as well as raising the emotional issue as to whether our parents ever fully tell us the truth as to what occurred prior to our birth.

But the book is far richer than this plot outline. For one thing, Peter has been working on a dissertation in law for several years, although he is fallow at the present. He spends some time teaching in Berlin shortly after the wall falls, so Schlink can once again get into the bedeviling identity problems which still afflict German reunification. Peter's major clue comes from a book written by an American political science professor, which affords the opportunity for Schlink (himself a distinguished Humboldt University law professor and former high judge) to dip into some postmodernistic legal deconstruction analysis re morality and law. Not too much of this (see, e.g., pp. 179, 187, 218), but enough to lay out the juxtaposition of issues between the professor and Peter. Ultimately, he concludes the professor is the author of the story fragments that initiated his quest and spends a semester auditing his legal philosophy seminar at Columbia, without disclosing why he is doing so.

Two problems I think afflict the novel in its final quarter. First, an episode involving the seminar participants at a rustic retreat organized by the professor, is transparent, too long, and does not add enough to the story to justify its substantial length. More importantly, the reader waits through 260 pages for the ultimate confrontation between Peter and the professor when he can reveal who he is and what he believes, and we can find out if he is correct or not. It never comes! Despite how much I enjoyed the remainder of the novel, I felt a bit cheated by this development. Nonetheless, this is an extraordinary novel, quite gripping at points, and raising a number of important issues requiring the reader to reflect upon his own experiences and values. And that is the most you can ask a novel to provide you.
At one level, an excellent description of how self interest and relativity intersect with ethical decision making and personal responsibility for outcomes. More practically, a well crafted story about a son in search of his father and how the father has influened (the son and the son's behavior; others). References to fascism, concept of evil, legal theory, Greek mythology, and Germany's reunification all usefully incorporated. My goal was to read an excellent (translated) German novel. I am very glad I chose this one.