An now, other opinions of Kairos

I do not generally read reviews of a book I intend to review until I've read the book. I would rather present my reaction as uncolored as possible by someone else's opinion. That obviously does not always happen if only because I read a book because I've read a review, although by the time i read the book I've usually forgotten what the review said.

When I do look at Amazon reviews, I look for those by readers who disliked a book I liked very much. If I've given a book five stars, why have others given it one? Why are our opinions of the same text so different?

All this is a preamble to say I've now read the negative comments about Kairos. I thought several were as interesting as the novel. For example, "I grew up in East Germany and was excited about this novel. But I am so disappointed! The love story… well… Hans is a despicable sadistic prick and Katharina too naive… and the interwoven philosophical ideas seem forced. I suffered through the book hoping for a turning point but there is none. It’s an exhausting read."

And: "I agree with the Amazon review titled 'Not Mastering the Past,' of this novel set in East Germany around the opening of the Berlin wall. A romance turned abusive becomes the vehicle for a revisionist perspective on German reunification. I disliked the book on many levels, although it is skillfully written. The character Hans is a familiar, repugnant type of intellectual. His 34 years younger lover Katharina discovers after his death that he was a Stasi informer, and muses in the next-to-last sentence of the novel that she was his 'mirror image.' The parallel, apparently, is that both were psychologically captive, brainwashed into giving up their privacy. This seems a bizarre exculpation of the uniquely pervasive culture of mutual spying that existed in East Germany. The Stasi’s penetration of all levels of society had less to do with communist ideology than with the seamless transition from Nazism to a Stalinist police state. Yet the reunification with the West is framed not as access to democracy but as a victory of capitalism and soulless consumerism over the humanitarian ideals of socialism.

"The tediously obsessive love affair begins with a sexual encounter (on Hans’ marital bed) to the accompaniment of Mozart’s Requiem, a lengthy scene which brought to my mind the German word Edelkitsch, 'noble kitsch.' (Translation note: the word “Slip” in German means panties, not “slip.”) For all its sophistication, this novel has a mushy core. The death throes of the relationship coincide with the fall of the Iron Curtain and German reunification. 'What will history’s verdict be about our time?' the novel asks, stating that 'the question is still open.' In another place Katharina asks why it is that only they, the East Germans, have had to examine their conscience, and not the West Germans. Undoubtedly it was difficult and demeaning for many East Germans to find themselves on the losing side of history. But the fact is that West Germans have been grappling with their Nazi past in a way that East Germans never did. I grew up in West Germany and we studied that era in school nearly every year, with no hint of exculpation."

It's enough to make me want to reread Kairos with these comments in mind.