The Reader

by Bernhard Schlink

It wasn’t that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It’s there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?

I like this analogy. I love that it can be transferred to different situations, letting go can be such a hard exercise that sometimes one needs a clear example to put it in practice.

I walked up the road. No car passed me, none came in the opposite direction. I heard birds, the wind in the trees, and the occasional murmur of a stream. In a quarter of an hour I reached the concentration camp.

This chapter was too hard. I am having difficulty grasping the conversation between them in the car. I need to go back to this and analyze it further. I guess the ambiguity of this scene was international.