The Colors of Farewell

“Colors of Farewell” — the final collection of stories by the author of the novels “The Reader,” “A Woman on the Stairs,” and “Olga.” Nine finely crafted stories about love and friendship, family and loneliness, old age and happiness. The characters here are completely unlike one another, yet each of them must go through a personal parting: one says goodbye to innocence, another to hope, a third to illusions and fears. And yet the recurring theme of the stories—as with all of Schlink’s work, starting with the acclaimed “The Reader”—is the inability to completely sever one’s connection with one’s own past.