The Viewer

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Crew's story is chilling as are Tan's beautifully evocative and graphic illustrations. A particularly deft touch is the repetition in each new slide of a figure carrying a type of recording or viewing device from cave paintings to a scroll to a book to a telescope to a box camera to a video camera. In fact, each single panel is consistent with the ones previous, recurring images like a falling star appearing throughout. This book repays close and repeated readings just to take in all the clever little details. The Viewer’ by Shaun Tan and Gary Crew was a truly dark and moody book that gripped the children as soon as they saw the cover. Unlike the previous books that I had been given, I did not read this myself before sharing it with the children which meant that it was a new experience for all of us.

train. It was a slow rush-hour train that stopped at every station; people got on and off. I sat atThe first twelve titles were obviously all entered at the same time; at first I probably just read, As a law clerk, Michael marries his girlfriend Gertrud when she gets pregnant. Over the course of their marriage, Michael never tells her about Hanna but often compares Gertrud to Hanna in his mind. The marriage lasts only five years, and Michael’s guilt over making his daughter Julia suffer through their divorce pushes him to become more open about Hanna in his relationships. However, he doesn’t appear satisfied with the women’s reactions to his past with Hanna and he eventually stops talking about her. a b Zeitlin, Froma (15 November 2003). "New Soundings in Holocaust Literature". In Postone, Moishe; Santner, Eric L. (eds.). Catastrophe and meaning: the Holocaust and the twentieth century. ISBN 9780226676104. a b Bernstein, Richard. "Once Loving, Once Cruel, What's Her Secret?", The New York Times, August 20, 1997.

Ominous words and violent imagery fuel this dystopia, which is equal parts science fiction and life-as-we-know-it. Crew and Tan (previously teamed for The Memorial Project work by a German class "The Reader by Bernhard Schlink - Summary, characterizations and interpretations", accessed March 31, 2015. As critics of The Reader argued increasingly on historical grounds, pointing out that everybody in Germany could and should have known about Hitler's intentions towards the Jews, there has not been a great deal of discussion about the character "Hanna" having been born not in Germany proper, but in the City of Hermannstadt (modern-day Sibiu), a long-standing centre of German culture in Transylvania, Romania. The first study on the reasons Germans from Transylvania entered the SS painted a complex picture. [38] It appeared only in 2007, 12 years after the novel was published; in general, discussions on The Reader have solidly placed Hanna in the context of Germany. It took me multiple reading to enjoy this as much as I do now and, ultimately, fully interpret what I think the story is sharing with us. As always with both Gary Crew AND Shaun Tan, I need a bit of warming up to appreciate them so this took an evening of close reading to glean some understanding. He lives with his wife Christine on several acres in the cool, high mountains of the Sunshine Coast Hinterland in Queensland, Australia in a house called 'Green Mansions' which is shaded by over 200 Australian rainforest palms he has cultivated. He enjoys gardening, reading, and playing with his dogs Ferris, Beulah, and Miss Wendy. In his spare time he has created an Australian Rainforest Garden around his home, filled with Australian palms. Gary loves to visit antique shops looking for curios and beautiful objects.Jewish woman, who wrote about surviving the death march from Auschwitz. She lives in New York City when Michael visits her near the end of the story, still suffering from the loss of her own family. While in the U.S., Michael travels to New York to visit the Jewish woman who was a witness at the trial, and who wrote the book about the winter death march from Auschwitz. She can see his terrible conflict of emotions and he finally tells of his youthful relationship with Hanna. The unspoken damage she left to the people around her hangs in the air. He describes his short, cold marriage, and his distant relationship with his daughter. The woman understands, but nonetheless refuses to take the savings Hanna had asked Michael to convey to her, saying, "Using it for something to do with the Holocaust would really seem like an absolution to me, and that is something I neither wish nor care to grant." She asks that he donate it as he sees fit; he chooses a Jewish charity for combating illiteracy, in Hanna's name. Having had a caddy stolen from her when she was a child in the camp, the woman does take the old tea caddy in which Hanna had kept her money and mementos. Returning to Germany, and with a letter of thanks for the donation made in Hanna's name, Michael visits Hanna's grave after 10 years for the first and only time.