Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany. When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael ... read more
Michael is falling in love with a woman who is twice his age. The age differences create a relationship that is hard to handle. Michael feels like he can't leave her; he feels they are soul-mates. Soon Hanna runs away from everything she has--her apartment, work and especially Micheal. Years... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
“I...I mean...what would you have done.”Hanna
“Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?”Narrator
“But I think that it is true and thus the question of whether or not it is sad or happy has no meaning whatsoever.”Michael
“"With the letter in my pocket, I drove to the cemetery,to Hanna's grave. It was the first and only time i stood there."”
There’s no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.Highlighted by 180 Kindle customers
The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive.Highlighted by 131 Kindle customers
“But with adults I see absolutely no justification for setting other people’s views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves.”Highlighted by 126 Kindle customers
But behavior does not merely enact whatever has already been thought through and decided. It has its own sources, and is my behavior, quite independently, just as my thoughts are my thoughts, and my decisions my decisions.Highlighted by 105 Kindle customers
But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible.Highlighted by 104 Kindle customers
I thought that if the right time gets missed, if one has refused or been refused something for too long, it’s too late, even if it is finally tackled with energy and received with joy. Or is there no such thing as “too late”? Is there only “late,” and is “late” always better than “never”? I don’t know.Highlighted by 100 Kindle customers
Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?Highlighted by 85 Kindle customers
Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept?Highlighted by 85 Kindle customers
They’re a matter of such indifference to him that he can kill them as easily as not.”Highlighted by 81 Kindle customers
chimera, I began playing with a different image of the course of legal history. In this one it still has a purpose, but the goal it finally attains, after countless disruptions, confusions, and delusions, is the beginning, its own original starting point, which once reached must be set off from again.Highlighted by 33 Kindle customers
Preceded by Jewel, and followed by The Pilot's Wife.
Preceded by The Rings of Saturn, and followed by A Fine Balance.
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