Book Review - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Published: 2007 by Black Swan

Format: eBook (Kindle)

Pages: 554

Read: 8 December 2013







Description: (Goodreads)

HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.

1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier.

Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.

SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION - THIS NOVEL IS NARRATED BY DEATH.

It's a small story, about: a girl, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery.

ANOTHER THING YOU SHOULD KNOW - DEATH WILL VISIT THE BOOK THIEF THREE TIMES.

Check out here: GoodReads

Review:

I could say that for this book you should ‘hang on for a rollercoaster of an emotional ride’, but I really wouldn’t be doing it any justice.

The Book Thief is written in the perspective of Death, focused on the character of Liesel Meminger, aged ten to fourteen, living in a German town in the midst of World War Two.

The perspective was different at first. I wasn’t entirely sure of it, but the more I read the more I began to understand why Zuzak wrote the novel in this manner. There aren’t so much cliff-hangers, as the narrator, Death, tends to almost whisper the ending. It doesn’t go into full detail with this, and I don’t know whether to congratulate or damn the author for doing that, because it sets up a hint at what would happen but the ending was still heart-breaking.

Liesel Meminger, aka The Book Thief, is a girl who is troubled by her brother’s death, her father’s abandonment, and by her mother's disappearance after giving her up for 'adoption'. The only thing that keeps her going in the moments of her brother’s funeral is the appearance of a book in the snow, and there starts her journey. The journey of The Book Thief.

She arrives at the doorstep of the Hubermanns' soon after her brother’s death, to live there as a foster child, and we begin to get a picture of her world and the people in it. Hans, a painter and musician who teaches her to read and write, Rudy, the pale-haired boy next door who is determined to get that one kiss from the girl he loves, and ‘Mama’, once quiet-spoken but now a raging hurricane, swearing at every possible person and at every possible moment.

It soon transpires that despite the book she stole from the snow by her brother’s grave, she has trouble with both reading and writing, and so Hans, her ‘Papa’ decides to teach her in the midnight hours, saving her from her nightmares of her brother's death.

For a while it seems, nothing much changes in her world. The second World War begins, but in their little town it doesn’t seem quite there yet. There are whispers about it, and the signs of things to come, but the beginning is about Liesel and her overcoming her nightmares and learning to navigate this new place she has come to.

Then Max arrives and things begin to change. The war begins to creep closer, with the fear of discovery of the Jew in Liesel’s basement and the talks of bombings and air raids. And books. Books stolen from fire. Stolen from dusty libraries and saved from drowning. I wonder if there is an analogy here. For Liesel, books become her life. The words saved her, but they hurt her too. The price of knowledge being the same as living. 

There were times in this novel that I had to put it down, for fear of finding out what would happen, but half an hour later and I would have to pick it up again. The urge to finish it, to find out what would happen to Liesel, to Max, to Hans, being too much to ignore. 

I did finish. It was a book I couldn’t put down, but I almost regretted finishing. There were times it made me laugh out loud. But it made me sob my heart out more. There have been so few books that have done that, that push me past the haziness of fiction into the glimmer of reality and instill me with raw emotion. 

I knew about this book the moment it was released. I knew it was rumoured to be brilliant but I never picked it up. I have too many books to read, I thought. I don’t have time to read it. I also need to be honest and say that the only reason I decided to read it was because of the trailer for the film (out in the UK on 31 Jan). I was curious and determined to read it before seeing the film itself.

So I read it. I read it and was angry because I should have read it earlier. I should have dropped every book I’ve ever read or promised to read and read this first.

It was beautiful. Heart-wrenching. Inspiring. It made me question myself, humanity, the world and why we live in it. It made me grateful to be alive one moment, and made me want ignorance in the next.

It was a book I'll take with me and I will never let it go. 

The Themes of Death and Life and all that’s In-between.

I’ve been reading a book called ‘The Book Thief’ the last few days. Some of you will know all about it, and will probably have read it. I’ve sat a little on the fence with this one, knowing it’s there and hearing the rumours that it’s brilliant and inspiring, and even seeing the flickers of images from the upcoming film.

So, with my new Kindle in tow (I finally succumbed, I’m sorry!), I sat down and picked it up, and finally worked out what all the fuss is about.

Now, I’m not going to go into too much detail. That I’m saving for my full review, once I’ve finished. No, here all I’m going to do is discuss the themes and the mounting emotions that the words from this novel have shaken out of me.

Like the fact that it’s set during World War Two, and in Germany, and it’s focus on characters that struggle against fear and morality, what they should do, what they don’t do, and the consequences that happen when they do the right thing.

I despair at the fact that humanity hasn’t changed. We still wage war, we still kill hundreds, thousands, even millions of people, and we still sit and listen to what we’re doing (maybe indirectly) to both people and the planet as a whole, and teeter on the edge of sitting back and ignoring what’s really going on and doing something about it.

I have to confess, I’m sure I’m one of those people. I sit here and I write or think about it, but I don’t do anything significant. I might sign a few petitions here and there, and send money in to charity, but how many of us really change something? We help, and that’s a good thing. It’s a start, and we must all start somewhere, but sometimes I wonder if we’re doing all we can, rather than just what we think we can.

But there again, I wonder, what can you do? I see people on the news, saying words about fighting back, but I do not believe in that. What better world could we have that starts with fighting, with war and chaos? Shouldn’t a better world start with peace and honesty? Of the ideals we want, rather than those we want to keep at bay?

We are all the same, and I think until we all realise that (because I’m sure most of us know that, it’s only the minority that seem to hold sway, irony of ironies), humanity as a whole will continue in the direction it is going.

I think then, of Nelson Mandela and one of his quotes that speaks loudest to me; “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

We all are born, live, and we all die. We are all just a flicker of a candle, burning as bright as we can before we finally fade and blink out. Where we go after, I don’t know, but it’s what we do while we live that we should focus on, and make sure we do what we believe is the right thing, regardless of what anyone might say.