Michael Berg is a fifteen year old schoolboy who (in 1960?) has an affair with a somewhat older woman. Every time he goes to her flat he reads to her, they bathe and they make love. He is in love and obsessed by her although sometimes she behaves strangely. Then she disappears.
Later as a law student he sees her in court. She is charged with war crimes. Then he realises her secret. The philosophical dilemma is: should you save someone by betraying them when they don't wish to be saved?
The affair and its aftermath are written about in very simple matter of fact prose with very short chapters but the prose can be poetically beautiful.
"I saw the expectation in her face, saw it light up with joy when she recognized me, watched her eyes scan my face as I approached, saw them seek, inquire, then look uncertain or hurt, and saw the light go out of her face. When I reached her she smiled a friendly, weary smile."
Beautiful.
Jan 2009, 215 pages
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