After reading Homecoming, my first foray into Bernhard Schlink’s writing, I thought I would give one of his thrillers a go. This one was first published in 1988, and it’s still the ‘Cold War’ era, which is a time which seems to be taking on the aura of a golden age for some people who have become disgruntled with the more complicated aspects of ‘freedom’.
Georg Polger is a 38 year old translator living in a small town called Cucuron, in France, things haven’t been going well for him, he has a failed marriage behind him and Hanne, his most recent girlfriend has left him. He had been a lawyer but an argument with his boss led him to leave the practice which led to a fight with his parents. Cucuron was a new beginning for Georg, he planned to write a novel but had to earn money to support himself through doing translations meantime.
Eventually the translation work he is given involves military plans for the arms industry and Georg realises that he has inadvertently become involved in industrial espionage. He discovers Francoise, his new girlfriend photographing the plans and realises that the whole relationship is a set up. Worse than that though is the fact that he is likely to be accused of murder as well as spying. Francoise disappears.
The action moves to the US where Georg hopes to be able to find Francoise and the solution to his problems.
I don’t often read modern thrillers, and yes I do regard 1988 as modern. I can’t say that it’s a great read, plot-wise it’s fair enough but there really isn’t one character in it who is truly likeable, and that’s a big problem for me as I have to have at least one character whose side I am on. In the end I didn’t much care what happened to any of them.
Such is life or la-di-dah, as Annie Hall would say.
I was just reading yesterday about the origin of the term Gordian Knot so it would be interesting to see how that applies to this book. But, like you, I like my books to have some likable characters that I can care about. Not familiar with Bernard Schlink. Will have to look into.
TracyK,
I read this one a couple of weeks ago and have taken it back to the library but as I recall, Georg decided that instead of trying to unravel things abd deal with his enemies seperately he does the equivalent of cutting through a Gordian knot (as you know, a very complicated woven one) and violence ensues! I don’t read an awful lot of ‘foreign’ books but I branch out from time to time.