Book Review, Fiction, Markus Zusak, SephiPiderWitch, The Book Thief

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

The Book ThiefI actually saw the movie before I read the book on this one.  The movie was quite good, and I realize that a movie can never do justice to a book, but the movie but scratched the surface of the book. The Book Thief is a story told from the viewpoint of Death as he follows her through her life from where she loses her brother in a train accident when they were on the way to live with foster parents till their mother could get on her feet.  At her brother’s funeral, she steals her first book, The Gravedigger’s Manual and keeps it hidden.  Liesel can’t read or write, but she holds the book as a thing of value, a connection to her brother. Her new foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, are an odd pair.  Rosa is loud, harsh and often vulgar with her tongue, admonishing as swiftly with her words as she is with her wooden spoon.  Hans is gentle and quiet, sitting by Liesel’s bed till she falls to sleep at night. Hans discovers Liesel’s book and so begins her journey to learn to read under his gentle tutelage.  Chapter by chapter, they work their way slowly through the pages of the book and day by day, their life becomes more strained as the war begins to take more and more from them. Hans brings in his friend Max one night, a Jewish man, half starved and looking as if he won’t make it through the night.  He is moved to the cellar where they make a room for him.  At first, Liesel is afraid of this strange man, but in time they begin to talk and form a friendship. All the while, you listen to the voice of Death as he speaks of what he sees, the people he takes in his arms.  He speaks of his life and what he has seen.  Though he gives special notice to what he sees in this war where there are days when he takes hundreds of souls into his arms.  Most, he is relatively disinterested in.  Its just what he does, what he has always done.  But, there are a few people he has come across that have left a mark.  And Liesel is one of them. I have read a few of the reviews on this book.  One said that not enough horror was given to what was done at this time. I will disagree with that.  I don’t think all books about Nazi occupied Europe need to be filled with all those horrors.  There are enough books already that have more than covered it.  The horrors are covered just enough so that you don’t forget what was going on while the story of the lives of these people unfolds.  So, you realize how people made do with less and still found ways to make life. How sometimes the horror was forgotten for a brief few moments while a young girl named Liesel read to you the pages from a book while the bombs were exploding overhead.  How a simple gesture like that distracted you till the shelling stopped and took you to another place where there were no bombs and life had normal desires and fears.  Where starving Jews weren’t marched down your main street on the way to their death. It’s a brilliant, wonderful, heartbreaking and uplifting story.  It tears your heart out of you and then hands it back to you with a smile again and again.  The lyrical prose of it will tickle you memory for a very long time after you close the book. SephiPiderWitch February 2015
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