This was a short but complicated book about a boy who falls in love with a much older woman who leaves his life only to reappear under very different circumstances when he is older. I usually avoid Oprah’s book club books like the plague but picked this one up because it was about reading. I was not disappointed. The book is quite short but packs a real punch. It manages to convey a lot of the strange and heady emotions involved with young love and also shows the main character growing and learning. This book was translated from the German and there is definitely something European to it, a different way of interacting between the characters, and some subtleties of language, to say nothing of the lack of general outfreakage about a 15 year old boy being seduced by an older woman.