The Reader

One week after Easter, Michael and Hanna go on a four-day bike trip. Michael wants to pay for Hanna. He has extra pocket money due to his bout with hepatitis, and he sells his stamp collection for additional funds. Hanna lets Michael pick the routes and inns. They register as a mother and son, and Hanna likes not worrying about anything, but they have a major fight. One morning, Michael gets up early to get breakfast. He leaves a note, but Hanna doesn’t see it and thinks he abandoned her. When he returns, she hits him across the face with a belt.

The fight ends with Hanna asking Michael to read from Joseph von Eichendorff’s novella Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing (1823). After they have sex, Michael pens a poem inspired by the 20th-century German poets Rainer Maria Rilke and Gottfried Benn. His poem expresses their dramatic bond.

As an adult, Michael can’t remember the lies he told his parents to pull off the bike trip with Hanna, but he remembers his punishment: He couldn’t go on vacation with his parents and older brother and sister. To bribe his little sister, also left behind, to leave the house, Michael has to steal a pair of jeans for her (he can’t afford to buy them) from the department store. Realizing shoplifting can be easy, Michael steals a sweater, but when he steals a silk nightgown for Hanna, the store detective spots him. Michael runs and avoids apprehension, yet he doesn’t go back to the store for years.

With the house to himself, Michael invites Hanna over and cooks for her. He watches her explore the apartment and touch the books in his father’s study. He reads her two German philosophers, Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Hanna asks if he plans to write books someday. Michael shakes his head. Later, he gives Hanna the nightgown, and she puts it on and dances.

A new school year starts for Michael. He's in 11th grade and in a new co-ed class (his high school used to be only for boys). Sitting next to Michael is Rudolf Bargen, a big-bodied person who plays chess and hockey, and Sophie, who has brown hair and tan skin. Once again, Michael mentions how confident he is with girls, although he admits he regularly swerves from overconfidence to insecurity.

Michael describes the classroom. Sophie sees Michael look at her, and she smiles at him. The teacher makes fun of Michael for studying her instead of The Odyssey. Michael thinks of Nausicaa, who helps Odysseus after a shipwreck, and he wonders who is more like Nausicaa, Sophie or Hanna.

Michael thinks about airplanes. When their engines stop working, the plane doesn’t crash immediately; it continues to fly smoothly and then crashes when landing. Michael thinks his summer with Hanna is like a smooth flight. He reads Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace (1867), and Hanna starts to call him names other than Kid, like Frog, Toy, and Rose.

Hanna asks Michael what animals she resembles, and Michael says a horse. Hanna is shocked but comes around to the comparison. He takes her to see Intrigues and Love in the next town, and while Michael likes hanging out with friends at the pool, he doesn’t feel like he’s missing anything by leaving them to be with Hanna. However, in July, his friends have a pool party for his birthday, and he leaves to be with Hanna. She’s in a bad mood, and Michael wishes he was with his friends.

Michael starts to hang out with people from school instead of Hanna. He likes Holger Schlüter due to their shared interest in literature and history. He also likes Sophie. One time, he and Sophie are caught in the rain and wind up under a garden shed. It’s cold, and Michael puts his arm around her to warm her. Sophie wonders why Michael is always coming later and leaving early. She thinks it has to do with hepatitis. Michael says there’s another reason, but he doesn’t tell her about Hanna.

Michael doesn’t know what Hanna does when she’s not working or they’re not together. They don’t share a world; instead, she gives him a specific space in her life. When he asks questions, she deflects them. They never see each other at the grocery store or the movies, although they love movies and discuss them. The sex becomes increasingly intense, and Michael wonders if she’s trying to push him beyond some hypothetical limit. One day, Michael sees Hanna at the swimming pool. He stands up, and she vanishes.

The day after Michael spots Hanna at the pool, he goes to see her. He rings the bell, but no one answers. He waits on the stairs, but she doesn’t come. He calls the streetcar company, and they tell him she didn’t show up for work. He tracks down the owner of the building, and she tells him that Hanna moved out in the morning.

He then visits the streetcar company, and the man there says she called them in the morning and quit. Losing Hanna makes Michael ill, but he hides his lovesickness from his family. He returns to the elusive image of Hanna at the pool and wonders if the woman he saw was Hanna.