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I feel this may be a book that I end up thinking very fondly of; already I'm surprised that I gave it only three stars, and that was just a few days ago!

Written with simplicity and clarity about something that is neither simple nor clear (a young man's first relationship with a much older woman, who turns out to have been a concentration camp guard). I really enjoyed it - in a way, the “simple” prose masks and, paradoxically then, emphasizes the complexity: you end up unsure of what to feel, but there are certainly strong feelings. I couldn't bring myself to hate Hanna, even though I felt I should be hating her - I was certainly irritated and troubled by her. Was that the “numbness” that Schlink describes? The inability to really wrap your head around it all?

In a way, this book is all about the next generation of Germans following WWII - their guilt, their anger at their parents (and the way the personal becomes political and vice versa; i.e. every teen rebels/hates their parents, but now you have, well, a really good political/moral reason to if you can accuse them of Nazi collaboration!), their inability to really understand everything and - I guess - inability, thus, to come to terms with the Holocaust.