The concept of love never ceases to amaze. From the cradle to the grave, a human being is guided,driven, motivated or annihilated because of it. Even when the presence of this feeling is what makes life tick for all humanity, we tend to call the romantic variant as 'falling in' love. This has always seemed ironical to me for if this feeling was as spiritually uplifting as it is believed to be, why don't we call it 'rising in' love ?

Ah ! But I digress from the point here ! This book is fuelled by an affair. The love contained in the plot made me plod through the dusty attic of my mind from where the lines above clattered out. The plot centers around the affair of a younger man with an older woman. An affair ruled only by sex and sex alone. During the adolescent phase, the thoughts of love are always entwined with lust in the mind. Like copulating serpents they lie and it is a futile task trying to make out where one ends and the other begins. The journey of Michael Berg through the curves of Hanna Schmitz's anatomy is also one of self discovery for him. In the loss of innocence lies the keys to his future and he is at the verge of getting to those keys when the short and stormy affair blows out. The pain of withdrawal while at first unbearable, slowly becomes a dull ache. With the passage of years there comes a clinical detachment while seeing the ones we loved and lost long ago. The beauty of the language can be acutely felt when the author describes that memories of long ago stay behind like a city as a train pulls out of a station. The memories are there, behind you but in the passage of the train they disappear behind a bend in the track.

The story changes lanes here and does a total flip and from a loved-and-lost tale, it becomes an intricately plotted tale of human morality and guilt. In a particular passage which depicts a court scene, I was reminded of a couple of lines from a Steig Larsson book There are no innocents, only varying levels of guilt . Through those court room scenes we are asked the fundamental questions about morals and principles, about guilt and remorse, of crime and punishment and other such things.While you are made fully aware that the accused while not being fully innocent does not deserve what comes to them.

To sum it all up, this is an extremely tragic tale. The love in here is like the strong gust of wind that threatens to uproot us while standing on a ledge.For the characters in here though, the wind becomes a little too strong to bear !

Recommended.