Bookreporter.com - HOMECOMING by Bernhard Schlink

HOMECOMING
Bernhard Schlink
Vintage
Fiction
Hardcover: 9780375420917
Paperback: 9780375725579

• Reading Group Guide

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

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