The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book was so cool and different. The use of figurative language is stunning. He describes things using words I’ve never heard in that context, but once I read it, it makes perfect sense. Brilliant is the word that kept coming to mind. The author said he likes the thought of little gems on every page, and I definitely found that to be true in The Book Thief. Death as a narrator–perfect. It should be noted that Death the Narrator likes to spoil things for his reader occasionally, so if you are hypersensitive about being spoiled, you may be offended.

In everything I’ve ever read and watched about the Holocaust, I never thought about it from the perspective of the good, decent, (in this case, working class) Germans who were not in agreement with Hitler’s beliefs but didn’t dare voice it out of fear for their lives or livelihoods. They too were trapped in this horrific situation without the resources to escape or oppose the Nazi regime. It’s so easy to picture every German of that time period as a monster, but obviously that’s naive. It was a very interesting and revealing perspective.

One of the themes of the book that I loved is the role of chance and fate. How one tiny decision or action can change everything.

One of my favorite things about this book was that it lasted so long. It is beautifully and brilliantly written, so it would be a shame if it was such a page turner that I sped through it in two days. I think I read it for about 2 weeks, maybe a little less. I was definitely interested in what was going on, but I guess the narration of the book always kept you guessing about what you were going to find out next, so you didn’t necessarily know if you read 30 more pages that you’d find out what you were dying to know. The suspense was never the point of this book, and that was a nice change.

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