Fall Book Reviews

Flights of Love

Pantheon, 288 pp., $23

Exploring love at certain boundaries -- historical, personal, societal -- is the thematic thread connecting the seven stories in German author Bernard Schlink's Flights of Love, the follow-up to his highly successful novel The Reader. A boy haunted into adulthood by a painting of a girl goes on a quest to learn the painting's origin and in the process uncovers secrets about his father's pre-WWII life; a man who learns of his wife's lover after she has died schemes revenge by starting an unusual friendship with the other man; a Catholic-German man hounded by issues of guilt and history in his relationship with a Jewish-American woman decides to be circumcised to prove his commitment. Love compels and tests these characters and many others throughout Flights of Love, and Schlink renders this wide emotional territory with compassion and detail. Unfortunately, Schlink sometimes sacrifices the individuality of his characters to the larger picture of their plight (i.e., in using universal addresses like "the man" and "the German" instead of names) and this remove, though intentional, dulls emotional impact.