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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Peter Dabauer's determined search for an author and the ending of a book marks the starting point for his own literary journey, but his answers yield only more questions in Schlink's new novel. Dabauer's life symbolically resembles the book's exploits while he is further befuddled by increasing discoveries about his own path and its connection to the potential author. Like all quests, his is not particularly linear and he is often interrupted by his own present-day tribulations. Paul Michael keeps readers enthralled with a soft and mellow voice that connects words and sentences fluidly. He instills Dabauer's first-person tone with a light Germanic accent, which personalizes Dabauer to listeners.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
Review
“Homecoming, fueled by a mystery, is also a powerful meditation on justice, history, and the nature of evil. . . . Schlink has written another lean, meticulously structured, disquieting thought-provoker.” —Los Angeles Times “A beguilingly oblique novel. . . . Despite its intricate, maze-like progression, Homecoming has surprising narrative thrust.” —The Economist“Sensitive and disturbing. . . . The reader's mind opens to the story like a plant unfurling its leaves to the sun.” —The New York Times Book Review"Plot twists and surprises and sometimes outright lies complicate the book's multilayered homecoming theme. . . . Schlink has woven a homecoming tale as fascinating as Homer's Odyssey, its inspiration." —Seattle Times
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"... because I wanted a new life . . .,
By Friederike Knabe "“We write to taste life twi... (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
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This review is from: Homecoming: A novel (Hardcover)
but did not know what it should be like."Most children growing up knowing little about an absent father will at some stage seek clues from the past in order to comprehend their own persona. The quest to fill gaps and to identify with their own behaviour may reveal unpleasant surprises. These can be especially disturbing for those growing up after a war during which their fathers may have condoned or even committed atrocities. In "Homecoming", Bernhard Schlink translates this complex theme into an engaging, multilayered tale, focusing on another sensitive topic of recent German history. After "The Reader's"[1995] worldwide success, expectations for this follow-up novel have been predictably high. In the earlier book, the protagonist was presented as an accidental spectator and partaker in an older woman's exposure as a concentration camp guard. Here, Schlink couches the uncovering of an older generation's deceitful behaviour within a first-person's account of an active, at times obsessive, pursuit of a fictional character, its author, and indirectly of the protagonist's father. The author creates in Peter Debauer a modern-day Odysseus, who roams from place to place, unable to accept his life and "come home". Will he, eventually, find out what he was searching for - about the unknown figures and, especially, about himself? Peter recalls his childhood memories fluctuating between those of his reserved and strict mother and of idyllic vacations at his grandparents' place in Switzerland. The mother avoided her son's questions about his father beyond the bare minimum: he had died during the war. His father's parents were not much better, and while sharing stories from their son's childhood, they omitted any reference to him beyond his student years. The lack of information had disturbed the boy, yet he had felt incapable of asking for more. On the other hand, he enjoyed his grandfather's tales of military campaigns and soldiers' homecoming stories. Schlink uses the grandfather's authority to raise contentious issues like honour and valour explained to the boy in the context of recent history. Accounts of German soldiers' tortuous travels in reaching home after escaping Russian POW camps were popular at the time and featured in the pulp fiction series that the grandparents published. Despite prohibiting instructions, Peter secretly read parts of one such story on the galleys his grandparents had given him as scrap paper. Unfortunately, several chapters and the ending were missing. What had happened after the hero, Karl, reached home only to find his wife with young children and another man? Was it fiction or the author's personal experience? Coming across the fragment as an adult during a discontented period in his life, Peter's curiosity is reawakened to find the rest of the story and to trace its author. Coincidences facilitated his task as he put his mind to compiling the diverse pieces of evidence. Some clues challenged his up till then laissez-faire attitude to his emotional life, while others tested his political frame of reference. The more he found, the more he sensed some familiarity with the place to which Karl returned. Peter's new romantic interest, while adding new pieces to the puzzle, nonetheless also interfered with his pursuing the mystery. In addition to applying Ulysses' Odyssey as a metaphor for Peter's quest, Schlink applies its structure to different levels of the narrative. As Peter's own life emulates the fictitious Odysseus, Peter's personal character adapts and changes as the situation or his obsession appear to require. Not surprisingly, given Schlink's own dedication to the profession and the specific topic he discusses, his protagonist joins the league of legal researchers. Schlink places Peter into historical contexts such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In its aftermath archives were opened that brought much disturbing evidence to light. Mirroring the author's own experience, Berlin has a profound impact on Peter. It reveals another facet of his personality. Continuing his search there, he becomes aware of correlations between the composition of the fiction fragment and some academic legal texts, justifying fascistic ideology. This in turn leads him to new clues as to the author's identity. Drawing on several known contemporary cases of successful ideological turncoats, Schlink develops one such character into the primary counterpart to Peter. While he feels more repulsed by than attracted to this potential opponent, Peter devises a scheme to unmask him that takes him eventually to New York. The author doesn't shy away from touching on some weighty topics that have been close to his jurist's heart for many years. He draws attention to some dubious legalistic philosophy and practice prevalent during the Third Reich and still persisting in some quarters, which, for example, argue for shifting guilt from the perpetrator to the victim, or from actor to commentator. "Homecoming" is a complex and profound book and despite its fluid conversational style, should be read carefully with attention to the clues that, while appearing haphazard and scattered at first, combine into a meaningful whole. Peter Gebauer may not come across as a strong or likeable character, yet Schlink has succeeded in creating in him an excellent example of the type of person confronted with the challenges of his time. The topical political and philosophical controversies that are brought to light are well integrated into the narrative. They encourage pause for reflection without losing or sidelining the pre-eminent theme of the story. [Friederike Knabe]
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.4 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews) 120 of 126 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
'We make our own truths and lies....Truths are often lies and lies truths...',
By Grady Harp - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Homecoming: A novel (Hardcover)
Bernhard Schlink stunned the reading public with his brilliant novel 1999 THE READER and once again with HOMECOMING he proves he is one of our most important authors today. Written in German and translated by Michael Henry Heim, HOMECOMING addresses, as did THE READER, the prolonged impact of the WW II fall of Germany on the lives of those who survived it. Not only is this a gripping story of a deserted son's search for his mysterious father, it is also a treatise reflecting on the horrors of evil and challenges the responsibility of those who perpetrated it and those who 'allowed' or were victims of its perpetration. There is much profound philosophy in these pages, enough to make the reader stop, think, turn to other resources for references, and become transported by the mind of a truly gifted writer.Peter DeBauer was raised by his distant mother who refused to inform him about his father, a mysterious man who apparently wrote novels edited and published by is own parents (Peter's paternal grandparents with whom he has an intense bond) yet 'disappeared' form his life to become involved in surviving the war by moving to Switzerland and eventually to America where he became established as a political science professor at Columbia University where, as John De Bauer, he became a highly regarded professor and mind manipulator. The story concerns Peter's quest for finding his father, a journey that places him in locations throughout Europe, seeking bits and fragments of information from anyone even slightly connected with the information he has about his father, finding solace and love from various women, and eventually results in his compulsive trip to New York to investigate the infamous John De Bauer, only to be caught up in a fascinating retreat in the frozen tundra of Upstate New York, learning the truth about his shadowy father. 'Sometimes I feel a longing for the Odysseus who learned the tricks and lies of the confidence man..., set out restless in the world, sought adventure and came out on top, won over my mother with his charm, and made up novels with great gusto and theories with playful levity. But I know it is not Johann Debauer or John De Baur I long for; it is the image I have made of my father and hung in my heart.' The magic of reading Schlink's books is the discovery of a mixture of brilliant story development with indelibly rich characters and the sharing of philosophizing about death, murder, suicide, guilt, and history's influence on who we will become. 'At what degree of cold, hunger, pressure, or fear does the layer of civilization start to peel away?' Yes, other writers are dealing with the scars left on the German mind living in the aftermath of the atrocities of national guilt. But few do it so eloquently and with such brilliant skill as Bernhard Schlink. At novel's end, the reader is consumed with the desire to start the book all over again. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, January 08 36 of 38 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
"One must learn not only from the harm one suffers but also from the harm one inflicts.",
By E. Bukowsky "booklover10" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Homecoming: A novel (Hardcover)
In Bernhard Schlink's "Homecoming" Peter Debauer, a lonely German man raised in the aftermath of World War II, is obsessed with the past. His single mother is a remote and strict parent who has always been reluctant to talk about Peter's father. The one bright spot in Peter's lonely childhood were the leisurely summer holidays that he spent at his grandparents' rustic home in Switzerland. There, Peter greedily studied snapshots of his father as a boy and learned that his father "had collected stamps, sung in the church choir, drawn, painted, and been a voracious reader." After retirement, Peter's grandfather collaborated with his wife on a collection of short fiction. One installment dealt with a German soldier who escaped from a Russian POW camp and returned home only to discover that his wife, believing him dead, has married another man. When Peter wants to read the ending the following summer, he realizes that it is missing; for some reason, he is driven by an intense need to know what happened to the soldier. His quest leads him to a house that is an exact duplicate of the one described in the story. There he meets and falls in love with a lovely and intelligent woman named Barbara. In addition, his continued pursuit of the tale's conclusion leads him to delve deeper into the checkered history of the man whose name he bears.Schlink explores the pain of a child who has never known his father and whose mother willfully withholds key information that might put his mind at rest. The author uses Homer's "The Odyssey" as a recurring motif. What kind of man would wander the world rather than hurry home to the woman and son who love him? Peter is a lost soul whose relationship with Barbara splinters, throwing him into depression and isolation. (To his credit, he spends quality time with Max, his ex-girlfriend's son.) Although Peter makes a decent enough living in publishing, he is neither professionally nor personally fulfilled. After holding down several jobs and traveling to various locales, he ends up in New York City, where he meets a man who may hold the key to the mysteries that have tormented him for much of his life. Michael Henry Heim does a fine job of translating Schlink's words from the German. At times, "Homecoming" is extremely poignant and evocative; it is heart-rending when a young man has never known his father, especially when his mother keeps him at arm's length emotionally. It is small wonder that Peter has such a difficult time forming meaningful relationships. Although Schlink makes the reader empathize with Peter and we care about the results of his search, the novel is not a complete success. At times, the author gets too bogged down in the nuances of the protagonist's endless angst. The last portion of the book, which should be dramatic, fizzles out disappointingly. Schlink goes off in too many directions, dealing with the vagaries of law, the nature of good and evil, the accountability of people for their past sins, and how men and women behave in extreme circumstances. Although Peter eventually gets the answers that he has sought for so many years, it turns out that they make very little practical difference. He realizes that each of us is responsible for his or her own choices. There is a limit to how long even the most self-indulgent individual can blame his failures on the shortcomings of his parents. 14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another Odyssee,
By H. Schneider "Hermit" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Homecoming: A novel (Hardcover)
This is from the man who gave us the 'Reader'.Schlink is one of the most interesting contemporary German novelists. He is a law professor in 'civil life', and that may account for the fact that he writes fewer books than some others. But this book is not really his first novel since the Reader, maybe only the first that comes out in English. (He has written a few excellent crime novels with an elderly former Nazi as a reformed private investigator, a man called Gerhard Selbs. The name allows Schlink all kind of puns in his book titles, as you can easily see if you understand a bit of German. Recommendable stuff.) The Homecoming: a man, born around the end of WW2, tries to understand his father's life and disappearance. He has never seen him and knows only the vague stories that his mother reluctantly gave him. There is a mystery about the father. At the same time he recalls that he read a manuscript of a war narrative as a child in Switzerland. A German soldier's 'adventures' in Russia, told in first person. The text was incomplete and the ending had been lost. The novel moves back and forth between childhood and adulthood of the protagonist. We follow him in his present day life's complications and in his recollections, until he finds his father under somewhat dubious circumstances. These circumstances are what made me deduct a star. The story finale borders on the kind of conspiracy theory and improbability that I do not consider an enrichment to the book. (On the other hand, if real life were not full of improbabilities, it were more predictable...) Still well worth reading. In most of his books, Schlink explores the tension between past and presence in Germany, and between different attitudes towards understanding what happened and living with it. I am not always comfortable with his implications, the unspelled-out meanings. Maybe that is one of his strengths: he does not avoid ambiguity. |
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