Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Year Published: 2005
Genre: Historical fiction, Young
adult
Set in Nazi Germany, The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a German girl
who goes to live in the fictional town of Molching after being fostered to new
parents. It’s a Holocaust bildungsroman that’s proven massively popular, so
much so that it’s now also a movie, coming soon to a cinema near you.
The first thing you notice about the book is the writing style. Death serves as
the narrator, and in addition to the story proper, we occasionally get Death’s
commentary, which comes in the form of asides.
~* An
Illustration of what I mean *~
This is what Death’s commentary looks like in the book.
Passages like this interrupt everything and they’re everywhere.
Just everywhere.
Is ‘commentary’ even the right word?
Extensive use of imagery pervades the novel and the prose itself can be rather
stylised. For the most part, it’s very readable, but now and then you get the
feeling that words and phrases were carefully chosen and polished for maximum
poetic effect.
~* A
Sample of Mr Zusak’s Writing, taken from Page Fourteen *~
“For hours, the sky remained a devastating, home-cooked red. The
small German town had been flung apart one more time. Snowflakes of ash fell so
lovelily you were tempted to stretch
out your tongue to catch them, taste them. Only, they would have scorched your
lips. They would have cooked your mouth.”
It’s a very quirky style and it demands to be
noticed. Its popularity with readers is understandable: it’s unique, it’s
lyrical and it has that lush quality about it. However, I personally was put
off by the self-consciousness of it all; it just wasn’t to my taste.
~* Heck, here’s another,
this time from Page Three Hundred and Eighty-two *~
“At times, in the basement, she woke up tasting the sound of the
accordion in her ears.”
There are more like this, but I can’t be bothered finding them.
You get the gist.
Most of the time, the style is relatively simple
and neutral, but every so often some particularly ~poetic phrase comes along
and takes you out of the story and into the mechanics of the writing. In these
cases, the language and format feel particularly clumsy and childish, kind of
like something a teenager would write (no offence to the Rimbauds out there).
For these reasons, I also wasn’t entirely convinced by Zusak’s portrayal of
Death as an entity. Having Death narrate your story is a brave choice, but I’m
not sure it’s one the author pulled off.
~* Oh, and the German *~
Another minor problem I had was with the use of German words. They
were sometimes translated into English and sometimes not. This just left me
confused as to whether I was supposed to know the meanings of all the German words to properly read
this book.
For a novel entitled The Book Thief,
I expected more books and more thievery than what there actually is. Instead, the
main concern of the book is Liesel’s day-to-day life, full of childhood
adventure, schoolyard fights and nostalgia. We have the kind father, the shouty
but loving mother, the boy who loves you and the enemy neighbour. They’re the
ingredients for a slice-of-life sort of tale, and while there is nothing wrong
with this – indeed, I liked it – I
believe that the title and blurb of The
Book Thief give the impression that the story is a lot more epic than it actually
is. So if you’re after an ‘exciting’ Holocaust novel, this probably isn’t the
book for you.
On that note, one thing that irked me was the somewhat facile treatment of the
historical context. Now, perhaps it’s because the first pieces of Holocaust
fiction I read were The Reader and Maus, but I found this book to be almost
insultingly simple. While this may all be very well for a middle grade or (young) young adult reader (a story where Germans are the good guys? woah!), I would have liked more complexity all around. The
characters are all pretty much either good or evil and what little exploration
of moral issues there is seems rather shallow. For example, consider ‘The World
Shaker’ (which, bizarrely, is printed in tiny, hard-to-read font), a book that
features within The Book Thief.
Written and illustrated by the persecuted Max, it includes an illustration of a
man in The Führer Shop (page 475) selling containers of “FEAR”, “HATRED” and
“small moustaches ½ price”. Now, if this isn’t the stuff of Year 8 Art projects,
then I don’t know what is. I know this is classed as a young adult novel, and
perhaps I’m being unfair, but I expected, well, more. Like an emo teen’s poetry on the livejournal of yore, The Book Thief isn’t nearly as deep as
it wants to be.
~* The Reader and Maus *~
are both excellent books, by the way
(or at least, they were when I read them some ten years ago, wow,
crap I’m old.
They’re by Bernhard Schlink and Art Spiegelman respectively.
I’d recommend The Reader if
you want a bit more of an exploration into the ‘German side’ of things and I’d
recommend Maus (which is a comic)
generally, but also as an introduction for those just starting to learn about
the Holocaust).
In addition to the pretentious style and the simplification of the context,
another thing that irritated me was the ending. Now, we all know that this tale
won’t end with flowers and sunshine, but still, it was so sudden and abrupt to
the point where it felt almost like laziness. It’s as if the author thought,
hmm, crap, how do I end this? Oh, I know! And yet I found myself getting teary-eyed
even in my annoyance.
I know this review reads like a litany of
complaints, but I did enjoy this novel overall. It’s hard not to feel for – or
at least like – Liesel and her family and the other ‘good’ characters. Her
coming-of-age in a small town was, as odd as it sounds, a pleasure to read.
It’s warm and bittersweet, with a healthy dose of charm. Her relationships, and
especially that with her father, shine with a real humanity and sense of love.
All in all, there’s such a bright-eyed earnestness about The Book Thief that I couldn’t help but be moved despite all my
problems with it.
~* One Last Thing *~
Happy New Year!
Alex’s
Rating: 3/5
Title: A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels and The Sweet Far Thing
While Gemma describes problems – particularly
the ‘ordinary’ real-world ones – and how horrific they are, we can’t disagree;
at the same time though, they’re given so little attention that there’s almost
a passive tolerance of them. In this
regard, it was Gemma’s musings on child sexual abuse that really made me
irrationally angry – she talks as if she knows all about it, but then she
doesn’t seem too bothered about it in the next scene, nor does she ever do
anything about it – to be fair, I don’t know what she could do in those cases,
but nevertheless I felt it made her concerns seem ungenuine.
I did like that the main love interest was
Indian, but I’m in two minds as to whether this series provides a positive
example of non-white characters. There was surprisingly more sensuality than I
would’ve anticipated, particularly given how simple the language is, so I’d
probably say it’s suitable for those aged 13+. I was a little disappointed in
the character development too – some of Gemma and Kartik’s relationship is
retconned in the third book, and I was surprised to hear Felicity, Pippa and
Ann described as Gemma’s “best friends” in Rebel
Angels after their uneasy and bullying-tinged interactions in A Great and Terrible Beauty, as well as
the fact that none of them seemed to actually like each other, except for
Felicity and Pippa. I’m not sure what it says about me, or the book, but I
found Felicity and Ann to be a lot more likeable and interesting than our
heroine Gemma.
Title: The Sense of an Ending
Title: Empire Falls
Title: Ship of Magic, The Mad
Ship and Ship of Destiny
The name of the trilogy essentially describes
its premise. In the Cursed Shores, there is substance known as wizardwood – a
sentient wood that can only be sourced from the Rain Wilds. A ship built from
wizardwood will “quicken” and come to life only after three family members from
successive generations have died upon its deck. At the start of the trilogy,
the liveship Vivacia is about to quicken – an event to set in motion everything
else in the series. The plot is almost impossible to describe without spoilers,
so pro-tip: don’t read the blurbs. The
Liveship Traders involves multiple plots and characters and is a slow burn
sort of deal in the bestest sort of way. If you like seafaring adventure
stories, fantasy, and being patient, this is the series for you.
Title: The Goldfinch
Title: Fooled by
Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2nd edition, updated)
Title: The Apprentice
Journals 
Title: Love in the Time of
Cholera 
Title: The Book Thief 
