The Book Thief

Finally, I have done it. I have finally joined the literary bandwagon and read The Book Thief. I also am now joining the yet a second literary bandwagon and am saying that The Book Thief was very well done, especially when considering how the book could have turned out. On its surface, there are so many things that we have seen before in these types of books a person living in Natzi Germany, and this person must hide their true feelings from the members of the Natzi party ect. But this is where Marcus Zusak offers an excellent twist by making the main narrator Death. This helps to create a story that I have come to not only look forward to but to also love in earnest.

The narrative viewpoint being Death makes this for an interesting novel on the whole, and this is because he is not the all knowing narrator that we may expect. Zusak tells us right up front that Death has met the book thief (aka Liesel) only a handful of times, and that the rest of her story is being told through her own writings. This makes for a very good book because it saves us from having the all knowing narrator and allows us to draw our own conclusions about teach character that Liesel is in contact with. I also liked how Death was written in this. He often will tell you upfront what he wants to say, mostly in big-bold-faced text. He also has a very, predictably, dark and dry sense of humor that made me at the very least smile when it came up.

Each character that Liesel meets is interesting and unique. I thought that the mother of the story would get on my nerves, but eventually she won me over because she genuinely seemed to care for Liesel, and of course I loved her adoptive father in this. He offers a nice foil to the mother and I like how his back story is written to affect the story today. I like how Liesel and her father connected through reading, and then she connects through the Jew that comes to hide in their basement. They all feel real, with their flaws, and problems available for us, the reader to see, and as we read more about them, we see not only what is on the surface but also what drives them, or how they became who they are today.

Then there are the little things that I liked about this book, like the level of writing and how Death seems to describe everything, particularly the sky, is just excellent! The backstories that are written here are excellently done because they never managed to loose my interest, nor make me regret moving back to the main plot.

Another element that I really respect is how the topic of book burnings and censorship is developed in this novel. Not many people know that the Natzi's were famous for their book burnings in the early 1930's. If you want a nonfiction book on this topic, I'd suggest When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped us Win WWII. This text describes not only the Natzi's book burnings but the international communities reactio to it.

In the end, I can completely understand why this novel has gotten the praise it has, and I wholly support it! While on it's surface, it may seem like it offers little to the genre of WWII historical fiction, but it is in the details that one will find a captivating and interesting novel. If there is one negative I can say about this book, it is that you should not expect to finish this book quickly, but that isn't a bad thing. It is a novel that takes time to read and comprehend. Just make sure to set aside time to enjoy it. I give this book a five out of five.