Bernhard Schlink (1999)
Reading this book in the car on the way home from Door County, I didn’t give it the deep reading it probably deserved–but I just couldn’t get into it. The story of a 15-year-old’s affair with an older woman who turns out to have a deep, dark secret in her past just didn’t grab me. Part of the problem was the stilted style, which could be blamed on the translation from German.
However, this was a classic example of the book club discussion resulting in a richer reading and better appreciation of the book.