The Book Thief

It took me twenty years, but this book's steady reputation over that period finally convinced me this might be worth my time. And it was. As others have said, it's a kind of mash-up between Anne Frank and Kurt Vonnegut. The narrator is no less a person than Death himself, who generally takes no notice of the living but does choose to notice one particular young girl whom he sees on three separate occasions, centered around World War II. Young adult fiction usually disappoints me with how shallow it is, but this is an exception rich enough to engage any adult. It virtually has to be, filled as it is with the heady topics of war, Nazi Germany, politics, racism and the Jewish Holocaust.

This book carries a lot of emotional weight, so much show more so that I actually found it heavy going. I didn't like to read more than a chapter or sometimes less before I wanted to put it down again. That of course made it take much longer than it should have and only prolonged the angst. Fortunately the hard parts are balanced by the hijinks that Liesel and her friend Rudy get up to - the stealing of books of course, and other incidents besides. And both of these elements are littered with the bizarre twists that fate often surprises us with.

I could not think of any book I've read that ever brought a tear to my eye, but I can now. The heaviest anvils of emotional weight strike in the final chapters, and Zusak was wise to foreshadow them. It's similar to the weight one feels when your pet dies and you wonder, why does anyone put themselves through this? Why read books like this? But these things hurt precisely because they capture beauty so well, and tragedy is only the other half of life. Even death itself can't make sense of this contrariness, so how can we expect to? show less

This book tore my heart out and stomped it into little pieces. There was so much love and brutal honesty on what it is to be human. Zusak held nothing back and he gave honest depiction of the cruelties of this time period. It was beautifully written with Death being an intriguing narrative voice that deepened the story in its entirety. “I am haunted by humans.”

I loved this book. I haven't read a book narrated by Death before and I enjoyed the original voice of someone we all meet, someone who knows more than we do and can move backward and forward in time at will to tell a story.
I also liked not only the Nazis being an evil force, but that the Allies were killers, really that war itself was and not death...Death was something that comes to all of us and isn't evil on its own.

I also loved reading of the power of words, as it is something that I believe in.

This book, narrated by Death, tells the tale of a German family during WWII, and how they come to find themselves in increasingly complex and terrifying situations. I have not ready many books from the German perspective, and so this book is at once a breath of fresh air, and an absolutely gut-wrenching read. In many places, the trauma being described left me without tears when I should have been crying buckets. Instead, I felt as though I couldn't draw breath. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in WWII, the Holocaust, and more importantly, how to be courageous in the face of absolutely terrifying odds.

My father has recommended only few books over the years. Our tastes in literature not very much aligned. However, of the books he has recommended for me to read, only one has been a bust-Andersonville. Then there was To Kill a Mockingbird and Cry, The Beloved Country. And Lonesome Dove, which I still haven't read. That is four total, until he read The Book Thief. I put it off for ages. All the usual reasons. There was too much hoopla, always a put off for me, it was published as a YA novel. Preparing my self for the slings and arrows....It's so okay folks! I have as much right to dislike YA fiction as the next guy has to dislike 19th century comedies of manner. As my father says, that's why there are horse races. I have had few show more satisfying experiences with YA fiction written since the 70s. I never even liked it much as an adolescent. There are a handful I have found intriguing and well written.

Those are my reasons for not reading it. Oh, and there is the ornery factor. Anything someone insists I just gotta do, I am going to find at least 100 reasons I just gotta not do it.

Long way of saying, my father was right. The Book Thief is brilliant. From its narrative voice; how often does one say one loves Death. I loved Death. While such a choice could have come off as a ploy, Zusak fully develops the character so that he becomes an integral character. As for the other characters, all are so lovingly crafted without the author overstepping into the bathic. I love books which resound with love as The Book Thief does. Every sort of love laid bare. Open and honest.

You're going to love this one! show less

This was another one of those books where I wasn't sure what to expect. I am super glad I read it though! It was a thoroughly entertaining, amusing, and heartbreaking read.

Death is the narrator of this novel in the most literal sense. He follows the story of a young girl Liesel. Liesel is a young girl following a tough road. Her mother, brother and her flee to a small town near Munich. When they get there her brother dies, and her mother takes her to be put into a foster home. Liesel finds a decent home with her foster parents and eventually befriends a young boy named Rudy. This book follows both Liesel's journey and the journey of those around her as they struggle through trying to make a living in Nazi Germany.

This was a fabulous show more book. Death as a narrator is genius. He is portrayed as a guy who does his job, but doesn't relish in it. He does what needs to be done and survives by looking at things with a dark wit and sardonic nature. Much of the narrative is darkly humorous and witty coming from Death's perspective. Occasionally Death bemoans the fact that Nazi Germany kept him extremely busy and wore him to the bone. Death occasionally gets off topic and rambles about what death a certain side character met, or a time when one of the characters narrowly avoided him. The narrative of Death is not all humor though; he is touched by compassion for humanity and sometimes struggles with the trials he sees humans put through.

Liesel is another fascinating character in what is a vast array of fascinating characters. She starts stealing books before she can even read them. In the end it is her book stealing (and reading) skills that help put the town at ease in a time of trial; in the end it is her book reading that saves her. It was fascinating to watch how Liesel and her friends struggle with being proper Germans in a Nazi Germany. You always here a lot about the races the Nazi's oppressed, but you don't often read about how oppressed the normal German people were under Hilter's thumb. Rudy is, of course, very interesting in his own right as is, Max, the Jew Liesel's family helps hide.

I was really impressed by how much depth and history all of the characters, even minor ones, bring to the story. All of the characters seem so real and you feel for them all. You even feel sorry for Death. Yet at the same time most of the characters look at their lives with a type of dark humor that makes life bearable.

This is a long book and not a quick read; but every page was worth it. The story always has some urgency as things get worse and worse for the townspeople, the Jews, and Germany in general. Towards the end I found myself cringing as I got closer and closer to what I knew wasn't going to be a very happy ending. Keep in mind this is about Nazi Germany, not much ended happy in that time for anyone. At times this book will make you laugh, at times it makes you angry, and at times it will make you cry. It is wonderful for a book to be able to evoke all those emotions, and to be honest the book took a couple days to process after I read it.

I think everyone should read this book. I think everyone's kids should read this book. People need to remember and know what happened in Nazi Germany and this perspective, from a common German girl's viewpoint, is a great way to get a relatively unbiased viewpoint. I will definitely read anything else that Zusak writes; this book is a keeper. show less

Apparently I'm the only one who feels this way (which I don't mind really), but I consider this novel to be utter rubbish and it deserves no place in the literary canon. I felt almost as if I were reading a screenplay instead of a novel, or perhaps the first draft of a novel that was never revised, because there was so little feeling or atmosphere in this book, as if the author was expecting the reader to put in all the emotion that he was too lazy to put in. It is rare to find characters so dry and lifeless as the ones represented here, who maybe have one adjective used to describe each of them, cardboard cut-outs positioned in a typical "dark" setting as if to try and emulate Nazi Germany by that alone. In fact, it was more like Nazi show more Germany from a modern schoolboy's limited perspective, very mass-market, made for Hollywood kind of deal, something that everyone can feel good about. And the ending was so predictable, the classic "everyone dies at the end", but it is placed there randomly with no arc to a culmination like some reversed deus ex machina, when the author ran out of the little sketches he strewed throughout the book so just decided to put a stop to it.

And don't get me started on that reviewer who compared this book to Anne Frank's diary, who venerated the former as being as good as the latter. It is sacrilege to compare the two and an insult to Anne Frank's memory, to compare her real experiences to something as staggeringly fictional as The Book Thief. Say what you will about the novel's quality, but don't ever confuse fact with fiction, especially with something as devastating as the events of the Holocaust. show less