Part 3 (Carlye Nealon)

            I found this book really interesting.  It was interesting how much Michael and Hanna’s relationship affected Michael throughout his whole life.  He compared everyone to Hanna, which caused his marriage to fail.  He could never stay with one woman because he never felt the same as he did with Hanna when he was fifteen.  On page 173, Michael states, “I wanted to be free of Hanna,” (page 173).  I feel like everything Michael did reminded him of Hanna.  He would never be free of her his whole entire life.

            I enjoyed how Michael would send Hanna cassettes of him reading to her in jail.  This shows how much Michael truly does care about Hanna.  He wanted her to have someone to read to her since he is one of the only people who knew the truth that she could not read.  I was so excited when Michael got the first letter from Hanna because it showed that she is learning to read and write.  This made me happy because it showed that Hanna was not living these years in jail for nothing.  She was putting work into them and not giving up and this lead to her being able to read and write.

            It made me glad that Michael didn’t forget about Hanna in jail and kept reading to her because Michael was the only person Hanna had.  She never had friends and only had Michael because of the way she manipulated him when he was younger.  He couldn’t stay away from her and loved her when he was 15.  I didn’t know what to expect with the prison warden asked Michael to come and help Hanna when she gets out of jail.  They hadn’t seen each other in so long and Michael is now grown up and Hanna was now an old woman.  Their first encounter was awkward because they hadn’t seen each other in so long.
             It was sad to hear that Hanna had died.  I was interested in seeing how Michael and her were going to interact outside in the real world.  I felt bad for Michael because he always blames stuff on himself and obviously blamed this on himself.  I enjoyed this book a lot and it was interesting to see Michael’s development throughout it.