The Reader / 愛を読む人

In the last two days I read Bernhard Schlink's The Reader. It was a quick read—just 218 ages, with wide margins, large font, and big line spacing. Ironic, given how long it was sitting on my shelf.

Truth be told, I read it to rid myself of a memory. And as I was reading it, I realized that that was what the book is about, too—not just about coming to terms with the past, but about how to deal with the desire to forget and let go, and the simultaneous inability (and maybe deep down, the defiance not) to do so.

The past is past, I know. It's behind us, it's gone, it's not coming back. But it's always...happened. The fact that the past "was" (and will always continue to "was") is undeniable. We can't change it, we can't wish it away. We may not think the way we did then, we may not love the people we did then. But the fact that we did remains. Maybe the question, then, is how to live our present and future...