"... because I wanted a new life . . .
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but did not know what it should be like."
Most children growing up knowing little about an absent father will at some stage seek clues from the past in order to comprehend their own persona. The quest to fill gaps and to identify with their own behaviour may reveal unpleasant surprises. These can be especially disturbing for those growing up after a war during which their fathers may have condoned or even committed atrocities. In "Homecoming", Bernhard Schlink translates this complex theme into an engaging, multilayered tale, focusing on another sensitive topic of recent German history.
After "The Reader's"[1995] worldwide success, expectations for this follow-up novel have been predictably high. In the earlier book, the protagonist was presented as an accidental spectator and partaker in an older woman's exposure as a concentration camp guard. Here, Schlink couches the uncovering of an older generation's deceitful behaviour within a first-person's account of an active, at times obsessive, pursuit of a fictional character, its author, and indirectly of the protagonist's father. The author creates in Peter Debauer a modern-day Odysseus, who roams from place to place, unable to accept his life and "come home". Will he, eventually, find out what he was searching for - about the unknown figures and, especially, about himself?
Peter recalls his childhood memories fluctuating between those of his reserved and strict mother and of idyllic vacations at his grandparents' place in Switzerland. The mother avoided her son's questions about his father beyond the bare minimum: he had died during the war. His father's parents were not much better, and while sharing stories from their son's childhood, they omitted any reference to him beyond his student years. The lack of information had disturbed the boy, yet he had felt incapable of asking for more. On the other hand, he enjoyed his grandfather's tales of military campaigns and soldiers' homecoming stories. Schlink uses the grandfather's authority to raise contentious issues like honour and valour explained to the boy in the context of recent history. Accounts of German soldiers' tortuous travels in reaching home after escaping Russian POW camps were popular at the time and featured in the pulp fiction series that the grandparents published.
Despite prohibiting instructions, Peter secretly read parts of one such story on the galleys his grandparents had given him as scrap paper. Unfortunately, several chapters and the ending were missing. What had happened after the hero, Karl, reached home only to find his wife with young children and another man? Was it fiction or the author's personal experience? Coming across the fragment as an adult during a discontented period in his life, Peter's curiosity is reawakened to find the rest of the story and to trace its author. Coincidences facilitated his task as he put his mind to compiling the diverse pieces of evidence. Some clues challenged his up till then laissez-faire attitude to his emotional life, while others tested his political frame of reference. The more he found, the more he sensed some familiarity with the place to which Karl returned. Peter's new romantic interest, while adding new pieces to the puzzle, nonetheless also interfered with his pursuing the mystery.
In addition to applying Ulysses' Odyssey as a metaphor for Peter's quest, Schlink applies its structure to different levels of the narrative. As Peter's own life emulates the fictitious Odysseus, Peter's personal character adapts and changes as the situation or his obsession appear to require. Not surprisingly, given Schlink's own dedication to the profession and the specific topic he discusses, his protagonist joins the league of legal researchers. Schlink places Peter into historical contexts such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In its aftermath archives were opened that brought much disturbing evidence to light. Mirroring the author's own experience, Berlin has a profound impact on Peter. It reveals another facet of his personality. Continuing his search there, he becomes aware of correlations between the composition of the fiction fragment and some academic legal texts, justifying fascistic ideology. This in turn leads him to new clues as to the author's identity. Drawing on several known contemporary cases of successful ideological turncoats, Schlink develops one such character into the primary counterpart to Peter. While he feels more repulsed by than attracted to this potential opponent, Peter devises a scheme to unmask him that takes him eventually to New York.
The author doesn't shy away from touching on some weighty topics that have been close to his jurist's heart for many years. He draws attention to some dubious legalistic philosophy and practice prevalent during the Third Reich and still persisting in some quarters, which, for example, argue for shifting guilt from the perpetrator to the victim, or from actor to commentator.
"Homecoming" is a complex and profound book and despite its fluid conversational style, should be read carefully with attention to the clues that, while appearing haphazard and scattered at first, combine into a meaningful whole. Peter Gebauer may not come across as a strong or likeable character, yet Schlink has succeeded in creating in him an excellent example of the type of person confronted with the challenges of his time. The topical political and philosophical controversies that are brought to light are well integrated into the narrative. They encourage pause for reflection without losing or sidelining the pre-eminent theme of the story. [Friederike Knabe]
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"Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke
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or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration."
Charles Dickens, "Martin Chuzzlewit"
Bernhard Schlink's "Homecoming" takes us to a place where the sense of home is as strong as the strongest conjuration. His protagonist, Peter Debauer, has an acute, but unstated, sense of what a home should be but this acuity seems driven by the fact that all the hallmarks of a home are missing in his life. Peter was born during the war and raised in Germany during the post-war (WWII) years. His mother is emotionally distant and self-involved. His father is presumed to have been killed during WWII. As a child we usually grow up (or at least I did) hearing stories about our parents and extended family groups. Those stories, from the good, to the bad, and to the down right embarrassing, acted for me as an anchor that helped tie me emotionally to my extended family. I don't expect that my experience is unique. But this is post-war Germany, a world in which Germany's post-war baby boomers are burdened with the silence of their mothers and fathers. Children do not ask "what did you do in the war, daddy?" and, if they do they don't get an answer. Schlink writes of a world in which the sins of the fathers, the guilt of the mothers, are still fresh and too raw to be discussed with the children. This lack of an anchor leaves Peter adrift and at sea in a very real sense. His life seems to be one in which he is carried along by the tides. He flits from relationship to relationship, and his career seems equally unstable. This is not to say that Peter doesn't have relationships or that he isn't smart enough or accomplished enough to make a decent living. But the sense that something is missing in Peter is very strong even as it remains unexpressed. "Homecoming" is the story of Peter Debauer's odyssey, his inchoate search for a homecoming.
I used the word odyssey because "The Odyssey"is the centerpiece of the book's form and structure. Peter's most enjoyable moments come when he is sent by train to Switzerland to spend the summers with his paternal grandparents. During those summers he reads bits and pieces of manuscripts submitted to his grandfather for publication in a series of books published under the title "Novels for Your Reading Pleasure and entertainment". Peter becomes obsessed with the story of a German solider trying to make his way back from a Soviet POW camp. The narrative of that story tracks that of The Odyssey. But the manuscript itself is incomplete and Peter begins a search for the rest of the story and the story's author that takes him on his own odyssey. He travels throughout Germany, Switzerland and the United Sates.
However, the manuscript's last pages are missing and, driven by the desire for resolution, Peter spends much of his adult life in a quest for both the author's identity and the novel's conclusion. Peter's search is interwoven in the story with the threads of his own life. Kept at arm's length by his mother, Peter keeps pressing for more information about his father. As Peter acquires more information about his father we see yet another Odyssey begin to emerge. As may be expected Peter's search for the author and for information about his father the reader and Peter discover connections that bring the threads even closer.
I was drawn to Homecoming but also found it to be a bit flawed, particularly in the latter portions of the book. However, those flaws (an ending that seemed a bit too pat for example and a climactic scene in a hotel that was pretty blatantly telegraphed to us in an earlier chapter) were outweighed by Schlink's prose and by a theme, a search for meaning by a generation when much of the past, a family-past that places our lives in context is withheld from us. Peter Debauer may not be the fully-formed adult we might prefer in our protagonists but that seems to be the point. The point is the journey and the angst and guilt that made the journey necessary. Home is a strong word and Bernhard Schlink's Homecoming shows how much can be lost when that sense of home is lost on an individual or on a generation. This was a very thoughtful book and well worth reading. L. Fleisig
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