Homecoming

by Bernhard Schlink

Book Overview

A child of World War II, Peter Debauer grew up with his mother and scant memories of his father, a victim of the war. Now an adult, Peter embarks on a search for the truth surrounding his mother's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375725571
• ISBN13: 9780375725579
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

true to form

a clean and elegant narrative that marries the exploration of character with larger questions of German identity and family loyalty. The ending is awkward and bizarrely out of character with the rest of the book, but proof of its irrelevance is the fact that it still does not diminish the overall value of the novel.

Brilliantly Written

Written with the same clear, crisp narrative voice that struck me in his first book (THE READER), Homecoming shows how Schlink has evolved in the last 10 years. Very well written.

"... because I wanted a new life . . .

but did not know what it should be like." Most children growing up knowing little about an absent father will at some stage seek clues from the past in order to comprehend their own persona. The quest to fill gaps and to identify with their own behaviour may reveal unpleasant surprises. These can be especially disturbing for those growing up after a war during which their fathers may have condoned or even committed atrocities. In "Homecoming", Bernhard Schlink translates this complex theme into an engaging, multilayered tale, focusing on another sensitive topic of recent German history. After "The Reader's"[1995] worldwide success, expectations for this follow-up novel have been predictably high. In the earlier book, the protagonist was presented as an accidental spectator and partaker in an older woman's exposure as a concentration camp guard. Here, Schlink couches the uncovering of an older generation's deceitful behaviour within a first-person's account of an active, at times obsessive, pursuit of a fictional character, its author, and indirectly of the protagonist's father. The author creates in Peter Debauer a modern-day Odysseus, who roams from place to place, unable to accept his life and "come home". Will he, eventually, find out what he was searching for - about the unknown figures and, especially, about himself? Peter recalls his childhood memories fluctuating between those of his reserved and strict mother and of idyllic vacations at his grandparents' place in Switzerland. The mother avoided her son's questions about his father beyond the bare minimum: he had died during the war. His father's parents were not much better, and while sharing stories from their son's childhood, they omitted any reference to him beyond his student years. The lack of information had disturbed the boy, yet he had felt incapable of asking for more. On the other hand, he enjoyed his grandfather's tales of military campaigns and soldiers' homecoming stories. Schlink uses the grandfather's authority to raise contentious issues like honour and valour explained to the boy in the context of recent history. Accounts of German soldiers' tortuous travels in reaching home after escaping Russian POW camps were popular at the time and featured in the pulp fiction series that the grandparents published. Despite prohibiting instructions, Peter secretly read parts of one such story on the galleys his grandparents had given him as scrap paper. Unfortunately, several chapters and the ending were missing. What had happened after the hero, Karl, reached home only to find his wife with young children and another man? Was it fiction or the author's personal experience? Coming across the fragment as an adult during a discontented period in his life, Peter's curiosity is reawakened to find the rest of the story and to trace its author. Coincidences facilitated his task as he put his mind to compiling the diverse pieces of evidence. Some clues challenged his up till then laisse

Will enthrall both the casual and serious-minded readers

HOMECOMING is the story of a young man's search for his father and the true identity of a strange and charismatic man who threatens to keep the family secrets. His first novel since his international bestseller THE READER, author Bernhard Schlink brings the emotions between parents and children, lovers and friends, wartime and the ongoing and fallible complexities of peacetime to bear on some exceptional characters in this work of fiction about the world post-World War II. A child of World War II, Peter Debauer grows up with his long-suffering mother and the painful absence of his father, supposedly a casualty of the war. As an adult, Peter begins to search for the inevitable truth about his own mother's background and the possibility of locating the father he has been missing all these years. There are doppelgangers, con men, lies and a long history of deceit to be overcome before he can rightfully claim that he knows his own family history. The search takes him halfway around the world and back. Putting together fragments of information, he is led to New York City, where his past and his future finally may come together. Peter creates a new identity for himself and comes to America where he works to unravel a convoluted chain of secrets concerning John de Baur, a celebrated poly-sci professor from Columbia University and bestselling author. Known for his antagonistic philosophy of life and the remarkably charismatic rapport he has with those he teaches, de Baur is the key and the most difficult obstruction standing in the way of discovering what he needs to know. Add to that the fact that Peter may have just fallen in love with the woman he sees as a soulmate, and the rush to unraveling his true identity and that of his family becomes an even more important and profound journey. Written in German and translated by Michael Henry Heim, HOMECOMING is a significant piece of fiction, resonating particularly in these times where right and wrong are sometimes greatly confused determinations. "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." And it is in this proclamation that Peter encapsulates the power of the drama of HOMECOMING. Usually a translation would not read as smoothly and elegantly as this one does. But clearly the translator did an excellent job since Schlink's prose comes through clear and strong. As much a mystery as a philosophical treatise on the importance of origins in the understanding of one's own place in the world, HOMECOMING offers a two-layer reading experience that will enthrall both the casual and serious-minded readers. --- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

'We make our own truths and lies....Truths are often lies and lies truths...'

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