Book Review: The Book Thief

I might possibly be one of the last few to read this book so late in the day considering the book has been released in 2005. And with a movie release in 2013, the book's popularity has only soared with the author winning most of the major awards.

To me, what was interesting about the book was the fact that the story offered absolutely nothing new. It centres around World War II in Germany. We all know what that entails.  The rise of the Fuhrer. And the humiliation & persecution of Jews. What the book does, however, is takes this as a base and using Death as a narrator, tells us a love story. The love a girl develops for words & books. The love two pre-teens develop for each other. The love a father has for his daughter. These again, mind you, are not novel themes. But the way Zusak handles them is what makes this book what it is.

The protagonist, Liesel Meminger, is someone who will stay with you for a long time after you have read the book. She is like any other pre-teen would be except for a tiny detail: she is living in Germany during WW-II and placed with a foster family by her mother. A large part of the book deals with the relationships Liesel forges with the various characters in the book: her foster parents, her best friend Rudy, the mayor's wife, and my favourite of all, Max (the Jew her family takes into hiding). Each of them have been narrated in great detail and it is very easy to visualize them as you read along the book.

Zusak's writing is different and unlike any other I have read so far. He writes long sentences. And short ones. There are highlighted & bold sentences in some chapters. And since he uses Death as a narrator, the conversational tone becomes even more interesting. I did get a bit bored with some of the descriptions but that could be because I was keen to reach the end of the book.

The book, in addition to the personal relationships, also handles certain other themes such as death (which is the narrator & thus omnipresent), the travails & hardships of German citizens during the War in terms of lack of jobs & income, how the War was responsible for forming certain relationships & destroying others, guilt (at escaping death, getting some food, etc.)

The book does not purport to be a report or guide on the Holocaust. As I mentioned in the earlier part of the review, it is essentially a love story. And though it is fiction, it could very well be fact. At least, that's what Zusak's narrative made me believe. Go read the book & discover for yourself.