The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink, is a contemporary fiction novel. It is basically an autobiographical novel about a teenager who is with an older woman who suddenly just goes away but they meet again years later when the boy is a law student visiting a trial about war crimes.

This novel has a couple different themes such as love, betrayal, and guilt. The theme of love and betrayal is between many of the characters through out the novel. I also feel that guilt is between several characters as well, which makes it a good book. Having themes such as love, betrayal, and guilt kind of makes it easier to get you into the book because it makes you wonder what will come of certain instances in the novel and how things will turn out in the end.

At first this book seems to be just a book about two people in love and things that could occur to anyone. The further you get into the book, and after knowing that it is taken place in post war Germany, you start to get the Holocaust twist of this book and it gets really good.

The character’s personalities throughout the book are very interesting and very easy to follow and what they do and say kind of leads to what comes of the rest of the book. Also how the author wrote this novel and how he made the characters made the whole book itself very easy to read and I liked how the writing style was in this book.

If you enjoy a good book you will like reading this novel. If you enjoy stories about the Holocaust I think you would love this novel. And lastly if you enjoy a book that has truth and real life events that is so suspenseful you can not put it down I hope you choose to read this novel. Before I read this book I was told that it was good and that I would like it. Now I would like to tell others to read it because I feel that it was a very good book and I would definitely recommend it to others and I would read it again myself.