The Weekend [Paperback]

In Bernhard Schlink's latest novel the action (if it can be called that) takes place in a country house somewhere in the eastern part of reunified Germany. Christiane, a middle aged would-be novelist, has organized a sort of welcome home party for her brother Jorg, recently released after 24 years in prison.

She has gathered together a number of friends from their student days, when they all flirted with the ideals of the Baader-Meinhof group, a notorious terrorist organization. Jorg, however, had not merely `flirted', he'd participated in various atrocities, including murder, and was caught, tried and convicted.

What Christiane hoped would be a happy reunion turns out to be quite the opposite. Well-meaning as Jorg's friends may be, to be reminded of his violent past leads to recriminations, arguments and fractious conversations. All of those present seemingly sharing a collective guilt for the acts perpetrated by Jorg but unwilling to face up to it.

The problem I had with `The Weekend' was that it was too much of a mirror image, plot- and theme-wise,of Schlink's highly-acclaimed novel `The Reader' but with one glaring difference (or omission). Whereas the focus in the latter was on the relationship between the two main protagonists - the young man and the female former SS camp guard - this novel doesn't really connect the characters with each other: they had each gone their respective ways and their reunion only served to underline the estrangement they felt: not only from themselves but inevitably from Jorg.

I cannot say I didn't like it, but I was left with the impression that `The Weekend' was more a lecture in narrative form than a genuine story.

Christiane collects her brother Jorg from gaol where he has served more than twenty years for Baader-Meinhof-style terrorism in Germany. She takes him straight to a week-end in a rundown country mansion with an assortment of old friends. This seems such a bad idea as to be highly implausible, but it is of course a device to enable the author, a lawyer by profession, to explore all the moral arguments associated with terrorism designed to overthrow a corrupt capitalist system and related questions of guilt, how our views and the situations themselves change over time.

In what I found the most interesting chapters (35 and 36), group members discuss to what extent "the truth makes you free" or rather that "freedom makes things true" which means "there are as many truths as people freely living their lives" - but also the "life lies" which people need to be able to keep on living. I wondered if the theme would have worked better as a play, but this would have made it harder to show the characters' thoughts.

Schlink introduces quite a large cast of characters, so that I understand why another reviewer felt the need to note them down: Ulrich, who abandoned his youthful radical leanings to become a respectable and law-abiding dentist, Henner who came from a similar privileged background and flirted with revolutionary ideas before taking up journalism, Karin the female bishop who conceals from her husband the fact that she had an abortion in her "wild" youth and rather enjoys playing the part of a respected member of the community, and so on.

Although I found the ideas and plot potentially very interesting, I nearly gave up on the book at several points because of the clumsy style of writing which may have been due to the translation. Many conversations seem very artificial, a crude vehicle for presenting ideas. Likewise many of the recollections are a heavy-handed way of filling the reader in on past events. Some potentially dramatic scenes go off kilter, such as Ulrich's unbelievably crass interrogation of Jorg at dinner on the lines of, "What about your first murder?" A young girl's attempt to seduce Jorg (Chapter 8) is another example of a confusing and poorly written scene. Some of the descriptions are very clunky e.g. "The residents of the village who have work don't have it here".

Schlink seems to be producing novels fairly frequently, but I wonder if he should take a little more time to hone his work in order to do justice to his deep concern with issues of guilt and morality in modern Germany, now extended to broader post 9/11 global conflicts.

For an American (of a certain age) it is difficult not to immediately think of the 1983 movie Big Chill [DVD] when reading the inside cover jacket description of this book. It is a weekend retreat, of people moving deep into middle age, who once knew each other in their 20's. More relevant still, and probably the inspiration for the Big Chill, was the 1980 movie, Return of the Secaucus 7 [DVD] [1980] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]. More relevant because the latter movie involves a reunion of political radicals from the `60's. In Schlink's "The Weekend," a group of Germans, who were once radicals affiliated with the Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang, of the RAF (Red Army Faction), have a rural reunion in a ramshackle house on a wooded estate when Jorg, one of their former "comrades" is pardoned, and released from jail after more than two decades in prison.

A Danish friend introduced me to Schlink's works some 15 years ago, and I've read both The Reader and Flights of Love and consider them superlative and insightful works. Thus I was favorably disposed to this latest work, and was not disappointed. The true strength of this relatively short novel is the author's selection of characters, and his deft portrayal of their interactions and concerns. The story commences with Christiane, Jorg's older sister, picking him up from prison on the day of his release, and whisking him away to the rural reunion. She has faithfully visited him during the two decades in prison, for unusual reasons. She lives with Margarete, a 50ish woman running towards "Rubeneque." Henner is now a famous reporter, and a focal character. Ulrich has gone totally establishment, owner of a chain of dental labs, arriving in a Mercedes, with pouty and sexy wife Ingeborg, and daughter Dorle, in tow. Marko Hahn is still committed to the "revolution" as much as ever; his sole objective is to use Jorg to inspire the "new troops" into more revolutionary activity. Karin has become a vicar, and brings her much older husband, Eberhard. Ilse had never really "fit" in with the group of middle to upper middle class affluent "revolutionaries" due to her poorer farm background. She was called the "milkmaid," and was the one who made the coffee! At the reunion she is writing a novel involving another revolutionary Jan, who commits suicide... or does he?... and even ties to Al-Qaeda. The interactions of these onetime comrades, and the persons they have now become, following divergent paths in life, are both political, and all too human. Schlink throws in a couple members of the next generation, including Jorg's son, to provide some much needed historical perspective on the squabbles and idealistic thrusts that seem to be as ancient as the Peloponnesian wars to these youth.

Thoughts and inspirations? Consider: "All right, the mother still has her husband but not the way she has her son. Her husband belongs to yesterday; her son belongs to today..." Certainly a thought for when one is fulfilling yet another challenge laid down: "Back then I hiked from the North Sea to the Mediterranean- you can laugh, but it's still two and a half thousand kilometers and it took me more than six months. I didn't manage the Sahara or the Amazon, but European hiking trail Number One wasn't bad, and I'll never forget climbing the last few kilometers of the Gotthard Pass after a damp night in the tent and then climbing down to Italy in bright sunshine.

Alas, Schlink's efforts to link Baader-Meinhof to Al Qaeda seemed strained and artificial. Schlink has Ulrich, the Mercedes-driving establishment member use the word "murder," and has this character push Jorg on the issue on at least two occasions (appropriately, in my opinion), but the link that was missing, and would have been even more appropriate, would have been to state-sponsored terrorism: the pilot, oh so cool, who presses the release button, knowing that there will be some, to total "collateral damage" in a few seconds. What an aid to untroubled killing is the airplane, as Norman Lewis once observed. Couldn't Schlink have had a character erase the "collateral damage" phrase, and replaced it with Ulrich's more suitable singular word?

Aside for criticizing the novel that might have been, still, the existing one deserves 5-stars.