The Book Lady and The Book Thief

2009 at 10am     Posted by Rebecca Schinsky

I read this book for the Book Awards Challenge, and since I feel like I was basically the last person on the planet to read it, I’ll forego the formal review and just share a few thoughts.

First, a synopsis from the publisher:

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

What I Liked

Despite the fact that I’ve successfully avoided reading full reviews of this book for the last couple years, I knew quite a bit about it going in, and I was still pleasantly surprised. I loved that the Zusak chose to have Death narrate the story rather than using a generic third-person narrator. Because Death is not human, he can comment on the human condition from an outsider’s perspective. Those bits of insight were some of my favorite pieces of the story. I also loved that Death was able to provide a sort of meta-perspective on Liesel’s experiences. She might be too young to understand that words, the very things that are saving her life, are also the the things that give power to the Fuhrer, but Death gets it, and he’s not shy about discussing it.

I would have liked to see a bit more of the conversation about rhetoric and the use of language and propaganda in Nazi Germany….then again, that would have made this a heavier, more mature novel and would have quickly propelled it out of the YA category, so I understand why it isn’t there.

Zusak’s writing is vividly descriptive, and he brings his characters to life by revealing their strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and secret hopes. I didn’t feel that any of the characters, even those that existed primarily in the background, were flat or one-dimensional. I could picture their faces, hear their voices, and feel their struggles. Zusak’s great success in this book is in bringing a story about humanity and the resilience of the human spirit to one of the darkest moments in world history.

I also really enjoyed seeing how Liesel’s relationships with her adoptive parents and her best friend Rudy Steiner developed. She is a young girl, not quite ten years old, when the story begins, and as she finds herself in extraordinary circumstances, she grows into a 13-year-old young woman who learns how to think and behave ethically, even when it is not easy or accepted. This is a fantastic book for starting discussions about morality and ethical behavior with young people and adults alike.

And it is very, very emotionally affecting.

What I Didn’t Like

To put it bluntly, Death isn’t very subtle. As a narrator, I mean. Instead of foreshadowing or hinting at events to come, he flat out tells us what’s going to happen—who’s going to die, how it will occur, how many books Liesel will steal, etc.—and like Softdrink, I would have liked a bit more complexity. Now, I get it that this book is written for younger people, people who may not necessarily be familiar with the Holocaust and who, because they are younger, may also need their stories to be more straight-forward. Death’s narration is probably spot-on for the YA audience (though I wouldn’t really know, since I hardly ever read YA novels), but really, a little more of the element of surprise couldn’t hurt.

Because I’ve been hearing nothing but rave reviews of this book for the last couple years—even the New York Times said it had the potential to be “life changing”—I had very high expectations. I thought and hoped this would be an unputdownable pageturner, but I found that it lagged a bit in the middle. Not surprisingly, I usually felt the lagging when Death was filling in the details of events he had already told us were going to take place. A little extra editing could have gone a long way. This book doesn’t really need to be 550 pages.

So, what’s the verdict?

Overall, I really enjoyed The Book Thief. Is it the best book I’ve ever read? No. Did it change my life? No. But I can see how it has the capacity to make a huge impact on readers, especially younger readers who do not understand the full scope of the Holocaust. By putting several very human faces on an important and painful era in world history, Zusak transforms the Holocaust from an abstract concept into a horrible thing that people did to other people. But he also spotlights the ways in which individuals reached out, despite the threat of death, to help and save others, and he shows that one person who is willing to step out and make the right decision really can make a difference.

I am glad I finally read this book, and I know that I will recommend it to readers young and old who are looking for a new perspective on a story that has been told a thousand times. This is a beautifully and powerfully told story that I will not soon forget. And I imagine that if I had read it as a teenager, it would have opened my eyes and changed my point of view and made me fall even more in love with words. Now, I finally understand what all the hype was about, and I think this book deserves the recognition it has received.

Have you read The Book Thief? What did you think?