Homecoming: A novel [ハードカバー]

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

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.

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.