["Ljubelj South", Slovenia; June 5. Image via Getty]

A woman explores on June 5, 2009 the chamber of former World War II nazi concentration camp 'Ljubelj south' where the names of all nazi concentration camps were engraved, some 100 kilometers from Ljubljana. Slovenian President Danilo Turk and his Austrian counterpart Heinz Fischer visited the tunnel and the entrance to the 'Ljubelj south' World War II nazi concentration camp at Slovenian side of the border with Austria. Between March 1943 to May 1945 Ljubelj south in Slovenia and Ljubelj north in Austria were a branch of notorious WWII Mauthausen nazi concentration camps, from which thousands of political internees, the majority of whom were French, were transported to Ljubelj from there. AFP PHOTO/ HRVOJE POLAN (Photo credit should read HRVOJE POLAN/AFP/Getty Images)

[Washington, D.C., April 21. Image via Getty]

A woman lights a candle under the names of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp as people read the names of Jewish Holocaust victims at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on April 21, 2009 to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls on the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. Some six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany during WWII. AFP PHOTO/Nicholas KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

USA Today:

Director Stephen Daldry (The Hours) has intelligently adapted Bernhard Schlink's novel set in post-World War II Germany. Though the effort is uneven, it's a well-acted romance that becomes a less compelling courtroom drama.

Salon:

Together, he and Winslet give the movie whatever emotional weight and meaning it has. You can't read anything about Winslet without coming across a reference to her willingness to take her clothes off, and too often when I read that stuff, I get the sense that many of the media gossipmongers hold that against her even as they pretend to applaud it. But Winslet doesn't just show off her body; she exposes herself in other ways. And what she does isn't easy, particularly in a movie climate where actresses are extremely canny about how much they withhold. I've never seen a Winslet performance (not even the frustrating one she gave in "Titanic," a movie I otherwise loathe) that came off as just a career-slash-business decision. All actors have to make money, and they choose roles for all different personal and financial reasons. But whatever Winslet's reasons may be, whenever she takes a role she peels back more layers, she gives more, than most other actresses do. As Hanna, she's a woman who refuses to allow herself to be tender, as if she were performing a self-imposed penance. She's also unself-pitying, sexually bold and insecure about her own intellect. Winslet wraps all of those ideas into one character, without needing to wave them around like brightly colored flags. Even the way she walks  vaguely heavy-footed, as if she's not sure she deserves to tread the earth  is a subtle choice.

And when she appears nude, there's not a shred of vanity in the way she does so. The movie's cinematographers  the killer duo of Roger Deakins and Chris Menges  use a palette that includes lots of naturalistic light, which makes Winslet's curves look realistic and vital, not like soft-focus art projects. "The Reader" comes off as a movie that doggedly follows some dull, preordained text. It's Winslet who dares to read between the lines.

The New York Times:

Although the commercial imperatives that drive a movie like this one are understandable — the novel was a best seller and an Oprah’s Book Club selection, for starters — you have to wonder who, exactly, wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about the Holocaust that embalms its horrors with artfully spilled tears and asks us to pity a death-camp guard. You could argue that the film isn’t really about the Holocaust, but about the generation that grew up in its shadow, which is what the book insists. But the film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it’s about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation.

New Yorker:

The whole film, in fact, with its loping pace and plaintive score, feels like a woefully polite, not to say British, take on a foreign horror; was there really no one, from the fierce new wave of German filmmakers, prepared to dramatize the Schlink? Or did they feel, as I did, that it was pernicious from the start—a low-grade musing on atrocity, garnished with erotic titillation? Imprisoned for life, Hanna must read to herself, but are we really supposed to be moved by the thought—or now, in Daldry’s film, by the sight—of an unrepentant Nazi parsing Chekhov? That is not culturally nourishing; it is morally famished. There is a fine scene, near the end, when a survivor of Hanna’s crimes (the great Lena Olin) tells the middle-aged Michael (Ralph Fiennes) that “nothing came out of the camps,” that they “weren’t therapy.” Quite true, so why has the film pretended otherwise?

Associated Press:

Thankfully, Kate Winslet bares not just her body but her soul with a performance that pierces the genteel polish of this high-minded awards-season drama.

As the central figure in this adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel, Winslet is in the nearly impossible position of trying to make us feel sympathy for a former Nazi concentration camp guard — but, being an actress of great range and depth, she very nearly pulls off that feat completely. What holds her and the film back from greatness is the oversimplification of imagery and symbolism that emerges as "The Reader" progresses, as it morphs from an invigorating love story to a rather conventional courtroom drama.

The New York Observer:

This is not to say that the performances of Ms. Winslet, Mr. Kross and Mr. Fiennes are anything less than convincingly heartfelt. This is especially true of Ms. Winslet, who is appearing later this month in Revolutionary Road, directed by husband Sam Mendes and adapted from the much-admired novel by Richard Yates. Ms. Winslet is to be reunited with Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time since they made box-office history together in James Cameron’s Titanic (1997), after she made her sparkling debut at 19 in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994). She has never been adequately appreciated for all of her strikingly offbeat performances, but now her time may have come at last.

MSNBC:

But by this point, “The Reader” has shown itself to be so emotionally constipated — not to mention unable to seriously address the Holocaust — that there’s nothing compelling about these two characters or their stories. As one character points out toward the end, “If you want catharsis, look in literature; don’t look in the camps.” It’s advice that Daldry should have followed, since his movie certainly adds nothing to seemingly boundless explorations of this subject.

Most of the cast comes off as twitchy and cantankerous, although Kross makes for a compelling teenager in love (he’s less convincing as a young adult law student) and the great Bruno Ganz livens up his few scenes as Michael’s law professor.

Newsweek:

"The Reader" is not about the horrors of the "final solution." It's about how Michael deals with the fact that the great first love of his life was implicated in these atrocities. Ralph Fiennes plays Michael in middle age— a parched, solitary man of the law whose unusual relationship with the older Hanna raises questions about his own moral compass. "The Reader" can feel stilted and abstract: the film's only flesh-and-blood characters spend half the movie separated. But its emotional impact sneaks up on you. "The Reader" asks tough questions, and, to its credit, provides no easy answers.

TIME:

In a curious way, though, much of this is superfluous to the movie as a movie. The story dares to hint at a certain smugness in the attitudes of its victims, which is something we are not at all used to in movies of this kind. And as a romance, at times feverish and other times grim, the film works surprisingly well. There's something gripping about the relationship between this ill-assorted pair, and something touching about the way events beyond their control or understanding reach out to blight their lives.

'The Reader' opens in limited theaters today.

• A new study claims that eating extra amounts of choline, a chemical found in eggs, while pregnant can lead to an increased risk of developing breast cancer in offspring. • Nielsen Online says that the number of employees visiting porn sites while working has increased 23% over the past year. • A new study reports that young gymnasts are suffering new types of injuries to their hands, wrists and arms .• Women who have undergone breast augmentation and are being treated for early-stage breast cancer may have more treatment success with brachytherapy, a partial-breast radiation treatment.• Inducing labor before the 40 week gestational age has become more common in the U.S. • The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is taking the estate of Beverly Rogers to court over the estate's planned auctioning of Mary Pickford's 1930 Oscar for best actress. • Honor killings have increased by 70% in the southern Iraqi city of Basra where women can be murdered for "honor killings" by hired hitmen for as little as $100. • Amnesty International is asking the Haitian government to do more to stop the widespread rape of girls in the country's slums.• A BBC reporter's 12-year-old daughter gets the Somali pirates on the Sirius Star to talk. • Canadian researchers say that gay men who feel undesirable are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior and develop psychological problems. • A recent survey claims that British men and women beat out the people of Italy, Germany, France and the US as the most sexually liberal. • We may have just missed the beginning of Advent, but surely this condom Advent Calendar will keep us up-to-date. • An Italian book that reveals unpublished excerpts of Amanda Knox's diary says that sex was a "predominant aspect of her life" and influenced her relationships with men and women. • A new study claims that individuals who wash their hands before making judgments tend to make less strict rulings. • More and more men are beginning to take primary care of their elderly and ill parents. • Meanwhile, the Gender-Based Violence Forum estimates that 60% of Sri Lankan women have experienced domestic violence.• An art critic for the BBC's Antiques Roadshow received criticism when he referred to a woman in a portrait as having "Shropshire ankle" (or fat ankles). • Are you ready for a relationship boot camp? • A Texan man claims that God told him to ram into a woman's vehicle on a highway while going 100 mph on Friday because she "wasn't driving right" and needed to be "taken off the road." The two only suffered minor injuries. •

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'Summer of My German Soldier', Bette Greene's 1973 book about Patty Bergen, who fears her father more than an escaped Nazi.

What can we say about a Jewish dad who beats the hell out of his daughter? It is not, to say the least, the common literary conception of "Jewish Dad" found in most old-school YA, where, when Tate is in evidence at all, he is generally a hardworking sort stamping down rags and letting his children choose books from his store, or a kindly dentist dubbed "Dodo bird" by his adoring daughter. (Do your reading for next week, ladies!) In fact, excepting stepfathers, genuinely beastly fathers are rare in YA: while they run the gamut from switching their daughters to make a point (oh, Pa!) to calling them fat and useless, I can't think of any other instance where one whips off his belt to beat his daughter by the side of the road...before he even knows she's sheltering a Nazi.

But then again, a Jewish girl who shelters a Nazi during WWII is not your standard fare, either. Patty Bergen, Jewish daughter of the South, is the actual daughter of Harry and Pearl Bergen, who own Bergen's Department Store in Jenkinsville, Arkansas, as well as the older sister of Sharon, who, though far younger, in generally agreed to be the more beautiful and well-mannered sister. It is not enough that, as a member of the only Jewish family in town in the 1940s, Patty is already barely tolerated among her Baptist peers. (Being the kind of precocious word-lover that reads the dictionary for fun doesn't help either.) But showering adoration on Sharon, Patty's parents in turn treat her with the sort of generic cruelty reserved for other people's (annoying) childrenher father with tempestuous irritation: "Are you questioning me? Are you contradicting me?"and her mother with an endless stream of politely pointed barbs meant to establish just how hideously unworthy to be her daughter Patty truly is:

"When I was a girl," said my mother, turning towards Mrs. Fields, "I used to drive my mother crazy with my clothes. If my dress wasn't new or if it had the slightest little wrinkle in it I'd cry and throw myself across the bed."

"You were just particular about how you looked," said Mrs. Fields.

"I wish Patricia would be more particular," Mother said with sudden force. "Would you just look at that hair?...Here. Go look in the mirror and do a good job. You know, Gussie, you'd expect two sisters to be something alike, but Patricia doesn't care how she looks while Sharon is just like me."

Didn't mother know I was still standing here?...I took in my reflection: "Oh, mirror mirror on the wall, who's the homeliest one of all?"

Mrs. Fields smiled her adult-to-child smile. "How are you enjoying your vacation? As much as my niece, Donna Ann?"

I wondered how I could honestly answer the question. First I'd have to decided how much I was enjoying the summer  not all that much  then find out exactly how much Donna Ann Rhodes was enjoying it before trying to make an accurate comparison. Mrs. Fields' smile began to fade. Maybe she just wanted me to say something pleasant. "Yes, ma'am," I answered.

"Hey, Ruth!" She looked up from her wash. "Ruth, know where I was? With the Germans going to the prison camp!"

She gave me her have-you-been-up-to-some-devilment look.

"I didn't do a single thing wrong!" I said...."This is still my week to be good and sweet. I haven't forgotten."

Her face opened wide enough to catch the sunshine. "I'm mighty pleased to hear it. 'Cause before this week is through, your mamma and daddy gonna recognize your natural sweetness and give you some back, and then you gonna return even more and"

"Maybe so," I interrupted her, and she went back to putting bed sheets through the wringer, understanding that I didn't want to talk about them anymore.

At his temple a vein was pulsating like a neon sign...He pointed a single quivering finger at me. "If you don't come here this instant I'll give you a beating you're never going to forget."

....Fingers crossed, I stepped through the opening in the hedge to stand soldier-straight before my father.

"Closer!"

One one foot advanced before a hand tore against my face, sending me into total blackness.

We never know exactly, but we do understand that it is partly her parents refusal to love Patty  to even recognize herthat puts her in the way of Anton Reiker, the POW who, like Ruth and her grandmother, finds much in Patty to respect and like. When Jenkinsville becomes the site for a POW camp housing German prisoners (this kind of thing apparently totally happened!) Patty, who is so open to the outside world she actually instinctively waves at the prisoners, is disappointed by the banal nature of the crew: "In the movies war criminals being hustled off to prison would be dramatic. But in real life it didn't seem all that important. Not really a big deal. My stomach growled, reminding me it must be nearing lunchtime."

When she meets Anton at her father's store (the prisoners, put to work picking cotton, are brought in to by straw hats), she is further confused by how different he is from what she has been led to expect:

...he was looking at me like he saw melike he liked what he saw.

"I'll take the one you choose," said Reiker. He placed six yellow pencils and three stenographic pads on the counter. "And you did not tell me," he said, "what you call these pocket pencil sharpeners."

"He was so nice. How could he have been one of thosethose brutal, black-booted Nazis? "Well, I don't think they actually call them much of anything, but if they were to call them by their right name they'd probably call them pocket pencil sharpeners."

Reiker laughed and for a moment, this moment, we were friends. And now I knew something more. He wasn't a bad man.

His mouth came open. "Jewish?" An index finger pointed towards me. "You're Jewish?"

I thought he knew. I guess I thought everybody knew....As I nodded Yes, my breathing came to a halt while my eyes clamped shut.

Suddenly, strong baritone laughter flooded the room...'It's truly extraordinary," he said. "Who would believe it? 'Jewish girl risks all for German soldier.' Tell me, Patty Bergen" his voice became soft, but with a trace of hoarseness"why are you doing this for me?"

It wasn't complicated. Why didn't he know? There was really only one word for it. A simple little word that in itself is reason enough.

"The reason I'm doing this for you," I started off, "is only that I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you."

But in the end, this does not matter, Bette Green's work is stunning not only for it's tragic proportions, but for the revelation of the great complexities of love and cruelty, and how we find them in the strangest places. I cried about 900 times while rereading this book, but I cried the most in two instanceswhen Anton, seeing Patty's father beating her, comes running out of his hiding place to protect her, and then when Ruth, who sees Anton run out, accepts that, as horrible as it is, Patty's refusal to hate will always put her in harm's way:

"I want you to tell Ruth the truth about something. You hear me talking, girl?" I nodded Yes.

"You tell me who is that man."

..."The man is my friend," I said at last.

Ruth signed like she sometimes does before tackling a really big job. "He's not the one the law's after? Not the one from the prison camp?"

"Yes."

Her forehead crinkled up like a washboard. "You telling me, Yes, he's not the one?"

"No, Ruth, I'm telling you yes. Yes, he's the one."

Ruth's head moved back and forth in a No direction. "Oh, Lord, why you sending us more, Lord? Don't this child and me have burden enough?"

• • • •

Now, for the winner of this week's challenge: Congratulations, one Rhadika B., whose self-proclaimed "lame guess" was in fact the only correct one: Sooner or Later by Bruce and Carole Hart, the most passed-around flashlight bunk-book of my era.

Seriously, how weirdly pervy is this cover?


I want to add double well-played to Rhadika, since actually I totally forgot to add that the boyfriend was a musician, and actually the hair of the CHARACTER is red, but the hair on the cover really isn't all that red. Take this as a lesson: Never run yourself down! That is for other people who don't know what they're talking about. Rhadika, you've earned the right to demand a column of your choosing. Email me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com to claim your booty.

Shoutout also to Beth D., who answered a question I didn't even know was a question: For all of those who didn't know what I was talking about last week, the book about the kids solving a mystery involving St. John the Divine and a genie is Madeleine L'Engle's The Young Unicorns, a wonderful, wonderful work that marks the point where L'Engle begins to port Vicky Austin into wacko supernatural territory. Still, my favorite has always been Dragons in the Waters, which stars Polly O'Keefe (I am a Polly!), Meg's daughter, on a freighter, where they also get into all this mishegos involving the Quiztano Indians, who I think are also in a Swiftly Tilting Planet, along with all that Madoc Maddox stuff? Are they? Oy, maybe we should just do L'Engle for like six months and work this all out.

Now to this week's plotfinder, which is actually from reader Kelli S., who emailed me the following:

Here is what I remember....There, for some reason I don't remember why, aren't any adults left. The main character is this girl and her brothers and sisters who have to learn to live on there own. They learn to drive a car and they're always driving around looking for food. At one point thers is some bird in a cage. The bird is a big deal, I can't remember why. They are always worried about this gang of bad kids so they carry around baseball bats to defend themselves. The end up fighting the gang and being able to live in peace. There are some sexual overtones at points. It's very gritty. It's not like the Boxcar Children or anything. I remember the cover of the paperback version we had had this dark blue cover with a picture of a girl getting out of a car in the rain...It was all about survival.

If you know the answer, either stick in it the comments or email me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com. Send intemperate demands to same. First correct gets it, and I will announce the winner next week!

Fine Lines
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]
Summer Of My German Soldier [Amazon]

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