She also loves Michael to read aloud to her which he does every day. She shares with him only the bare facts of her life her name is Hanna, she is a conductor on the street car and she lives alone. From that day Michael goes to her every day. Seeing each other naked they are drawn inexplicably to each other. When Michael returns, he helps her by bringing coal up to the apartment but is so covered in dirt from it that she runs him a bath. The woman is busy with errands but Michael finds himself strangely attracted to her and runs out of the apartment like a child. He has hepatitis and is sick for some time, but when he is feeling better his mother dispatches him to the woman's apartment so that he can thank her properly. Going home from school one afternoon, he began to feel nauseous and vomited violently all over himself a woman sees him and brings him into her apartment to clean him up before he goes home. Michael begins the novel by telling the reader that as a fifteen-year-old boy he became involved with a woman in her mid-thirties, and that he has remained infatuated with her memory ever since. Michael Berg is a German who has grown up very aware of what was perpetrated by the Nazis during the Third Reich, and like many young men his age feels anger and shame which he directs mostly at his parents' and grandparents' generation for sitting by and enabling it to happen. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.

The reader schlink