Self's Punishment and Niggling Doubts

Just finished another book so I though I'd best come and blog-out my review ASAP, before I forget I've read it. I keep having these niggling doubts that I've missed at least a couple of books in between Twilight and Breakfast at Tiffany's - I must have! I can't possibly have read that little. Unfortunately, racking my brains is turning out to be a fairly short-lived line of enquiry. All I can think is that it's possibly I've been too distracted with uni reading to do much else (I do intend to write reviews on some of the novels I study as part of my coursework, but so far this semester we've been doing a lot of poetry - Whitman, Dickinson etc - or I haven't finished reading the novels set - like The Scarlet Letter. Which I thought was actually quite good but had trouble getting into, and trouble with my time management skills as well - essays being due at the same time and whatnot).

Anyway, enough excuses, on to the book review - these past few weeks I've been delving into the literary world of German crime fiction - specifically, a collaboration between Bernhard Schlink (of 'The Reader' fame) and Walter Popp, who collectively published 'Self's Punishment' under the psuedonym Thomas Richter.



This book was published in Germany in 1987, but wasn't translated into English until 2004, or so says the little flap on the inside of the jacket. We probably only got the translation because Schlink had such a great success with 'The Reader'. It's about a private investigator and former Nazi prosecutor, Gerhard Self, who is assigned to a case at a large chemical works plant thingy, where someone has been messing with the computer system and generally causing havoc - giving the lower-level employees extra holiday time, cutting the executives' salaries and messing with the automated tennis court booking system. Things get hairier when tampering with the computer-controlled gas sensing system leads to an explosion at the plant.

I was really looking forward to reading this book, as I'm a really big fan of 'The Reader', and another of Schlink's more recent novels, 'Homecoming'. Unfortunately, I think Walter Popp is a bad influence on Schlink. You could see touches of Schlink's brilliance in certain character descriptions, but mostly his flair was obscured by what I assume was a really low-grade translation (does being bitchy hurt less if I suffix that with a "no offence"?). And, clearly, the collaboration was less than cohesive - parts of this seem like each writer was writing in a separate room, and neither of them bothered to double-check if the various sections fitted together. I've given group presentations with similar problems, so I understand. But it does seem a bit shameful that this kind of disorganisation would occur within an international publication, rather than just in a first year history course.

In some places, the scenes just seemed like a really detailed synopsis. A publication of the author's notes, if you will. Despite this, it was a good plot - and an interesting look into post-WW2 German culture - and I have hope that the sequel, Self's Deception, will be better.