The Reader / Bernhard Schlink / 218 p.

I didn't see the movie, but I guessed the "deep dark secret" that drives many of the otherwise mysterious actions of one of the major characters a few dozen pages into the book.  No, I won't share it here.  You will have to read the book or force yourself to stare at Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes for hours on screen...tough, I know...to find out.  Maybe author Bernhard Schlink intended the reader to guess long before the narrator does; in a way it is beside the point as he drags his narrator (the reader of the book's title) as well as the book's readers, into an emotional contemplation on relationships, individual choices, history and collective judgment and guilt.  Put that way, the book sounds terribly depressing, but believe me; it is not.  The beauty is in the details.  I read it in two sittings, and now I hope to find a copy in the original German.