Review of OLGA by Bernhard Schlink

 4 Stars

Like many other readers, I first encountered Bernhard Schlink as the author of The Reader, a book which certainly had an emotional impact on me.  Even though I read it almost 25 years ago, I remember it well.  I was excited therefore to encounter Schlink’s latest book to be translated into English. 

Olga Rinke is a poor, orphaned village girl who falls in love with Herbert Schröder, her aristocratic neighbour and childhood friend.  His parents disapprove of the relationship, but the two continue to meet, though there are long periods of time when they are apart.  Olga fights against the prejudices and restrictions she faces because she is poor and a woman.  She manages to get an education and become a teacher.  Herbert is a man consumed by wanderlust.  He yearns for vast, empty spaces.  He travels to Africa, South America and the Arctic with little concern for the dangers.  A poem he writes indicates his philosophy for living:  “First look, consider, then leap, without delay!/ Better in the bloom of life to be snatched away/In the struggle to serve humanity – to dare – /Than a hobbled old age, an existence free of care.”

The novel has three parts.  The first part is a third person, dispassionate telling of Olga’s life from her birth in the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.  The second section is a first person reflection on Olga’s life; it focuses on the later years of her life until her death in the early 1970s; the narrator is Ferdinand who got to know Olga when she came to work for his family in the 1950s.  The last part is epistolary; it consists of a series of letters written by Olga to Herbert after he left on a trip to the Arctic just before the beginning of World War I.

Olga is a very interesting character.  She is independent and resourceful, a woman very much out of step with her time.  She is an original thinker who rejects ideology.  Herbert and Eik, a young man she sees grow up, embrace Germany’s nationalism and desire for greatness and conquest.  She thinks “Germany was aiming to be too big.  Bismarck had already wanted and made it too big in his time.  And a second world war would follow the first.”  In the end, “Too big – it was to this that Olga thought she had lost Herbert and Eik, what she held Bismarck responsible for.”  Her actions support her beliefs:  she refuses to teach Nazi racial theory in school and cuts off ties with a person she loves because that person espouses beliefs she cannot accept.

I did not always understand Olga’s love for and loyalty to Herbert.  His arrogance, for instance, does not make him an attractive person.  He travels to Argentina with “idlers with a penchant for travel and adventure.”  Although he doesn’t see himself this way, that’s the perfect description of him.  He is enthralled with “German discipline, German audacity, and German heroism.”  He can be admired for believing “he could do anything.  All he had to do was not give up” but his recklessness and lack of concern for how his choices impact others, especially Olga, cannot be ignored.  His refusal to consider the morality of Germany’s actions in Africa shows him to be narrow-minded.

Of course, as Olga points out, “Love doesn’t keep a tally of the other’s good and bad qualities.”  Her love for Herbert is not blind.  She admits that he is cowardly and stupid and sweet, “But sweetness cannot compete with stupidity and cowardice.”  She tells Herbert that Eik has similar traits:  “his decisiveness and fearlessness, the artless egotism with which he hurts others without meaning to hurt them – he simply doesn’t see them.  When he’s excited about something, when he succeeds in doing something, he lights up.”  She understands Herbert’s limitations:  “Olga knew that he loved her and was as close to her as he was able to be with another human being.  He was also as happy with her as he was able to be with another human being.  He denied her nothing he was able to give.  What she felt she lacked he wasn’t capable of giving.”  She describes Herbert as loyal, but it is she who is unfailingly so. 

This novel had me doing some research.  For instance, I knew virtually nothing about the Herero genocide or the search for the Northeast Passage.  A better knowledge of German history would have helped me.  In my research, I discovered that Herbert seems to have been based on a real person, Herbert Schröder-Stranz.  In the novel, mention is made of the fact that “Herbert later hyphenated [Schröder] with the name of the village, because he didn’t want to be one Schröder among many.”

Olga doesn’t have the emotional impact of The Reader, but it is a good book.  Olga is a character that will remain with me for a while.  She is a strong, resilient person who remains true to herself and who loves despite being disappointed in those she loves.