The granddaughter A novel

This compelling novel from prolific German author Schlink concerns 71-year-old bookseller Kaspar Wettner, whose wife has died--whether by accident or suicide is unclear. Going through her papers, Kaspar discovers that she had a baby girl out of wedlock before their marriage. He finds the now-adult woman, Svenja, and learns that she has a daughter of her own, 14-year-old Sigrun. Despite the family's disconcerting politics--they are far right, antisemitic Holocaust deniers, and xenophobes--Kaspar arranges an inheritance for Sigrun to be paid to the girl's greedy father. In exchange, Sigrun will be permitted to visit Kaspar each time he pays an installment. Even beyond political views, grandfather and granddaughter have little in common, but they find a shared interest in music. Strong-willed Sigrun determines to learn to play the piano and succeeds beautifully. As she gets to know Kaspar, will she reject her parents' political beliefs and embrace his mainstream ones? Schlink does a superb job of character development and sensitively charts the evolving relationship between Kaspar and Sigrun. The story is also well-plotted and unfailingly interesting, building suspense as readers wonder what will happen to Sigrun as she becomes a young woman.

Schlink (The Reader) delivers a touching narrative about an elderly man's discovery of his wife's secrets. After Kaspar Wettner's wife, Birgit, accidentally drowns in a bathtub, he finds a diary in which she reveals that before they married in the 1960s, she gave birth to another man's child and left the girl on a doorstep. With the help of the nurse who delivered the baby, he locates Birgit's daughter, Svenja, in the neo-Nazi community where she's living with her husband, Björn, and their 14-year-old daughter, Sigrun. At first, Björn bars Kaspar from seeing either Svenja or Sigrun, but he eventually agrees to let Sigrun visit Kaspar in Berlin in exchange for the inheritance Kaspar says Birgit provided for her. During Sigrun's visits, Kaspar tries to dispel her of neo-Nazi beliefs by giving her books and articles debunking them. As Kaspar and Sigrun grow closer and explore Berlin's art scene, they form a bond despite their political differences and Kaspar's fear that Björn could curtail the visits. Schlink offers an unflinching look at the neo-Nazi movement and the compromises people make out of love. It's a powerful story of loss and the desire to move forward. (Jan.)

Germany is reunited, but a family is starkly divided. Kaspar Wettner, a septuagenarian bookseller in Berlin, has been married for years to Birgit, whom he deeply loves although he can do nothing to ease her depression and addiction to alcohol. She is "a child of East Germany, of the GDR, of the proletarian world that, with Prussian socialist fervor, yearned to be bourgeois and took culture and politics seriously, as the bourgeoisie had once done and had forgotten how to do." When Birgit dies, Kaspar sorts through her papers, finding reference to a child he knew nothing about. Kaspar is nothing if not diligent, and he hunts down the whereabouts of the father--who understandably isn't thrilled to meet him, but who points the way to the long-lost daughter all the same. The problem is, Svenja is völkisch: that is to say, having connected long ago with "a skinhead…in a bomber jacket and combat boots," she once amused herself by "taking drugs, beating up gays and foreigners…[and] doing stuff that people don't always survive." Svenja now lives in a cramped house with her husband and daughter, dreaming of the day when they can fulfill the neo-Nazi dream of living on a farm far away from the city. Sigrun, the daughter, takes to her new grandfather, who dotes on her even as he tries to sway her from her hateful views. Sigrun proves a harder case than Kaspar can imagine. Schlink avoids stereotyping while making it clear that his characters' fascist views can yield nothing but disaster--but also that, in the end, at least some of those characters aren't hopelessly irredeemable. A brilliant dissection of a fragmented nation in which a glimmer of hope relieves a somber but wholly memorable tale. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.