The Book Thief

It was a busy October, which meant I wasn’t writing anything for this blog.  And now I’m three books behind on book reviews.  I know this has been devastating for the zero people who read these.  Anyway, I’ll do my best to kick these next few reviews out quickly.  And I’ll try to keep them short.  At least short for me.

Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany and tells the story of Liesel Meminger, an adolescent girl who is given up for adoption by her mother and whose brother dies on the way to their foster parents' home.  Liesel can’t read well, but develops a relationship with her foster father as he attempts to teach her, which leads to a love of books and eventually writing.  Zusak's story also includes book burnings, the Hitler Youth, Jews hiding in basements, bombings, stolen books and the dangers of living in Nazi Germany, both for the Jews (obviously) and also the non-Nazi sympathizing German citizens.

I had purchased this book over a year ago, but despite being intrigued enough to buy it, I didn't read it at first because I was unsure about the young adult label I had read somewhere.  Mrs. ended up reading it first and reviewed it here.  Well, I'm glad I finally picked it up because it didn’t read like young adult at all; the writing was sophisticated and the story was dark and engaging.  It was easily my favorite book I’ve read this year and possibly since I started reviewing books on this blog.  Zusak did a wonderful job crafting the story and developing the characters and making all of them sympathetic, as they lived in these unimaginable times.  The book was narrated by Death, which was a creative idea, but I probably wouldn’t even have noticed if it wasn’t.  It was the story that made this great.

I was supposed to keep this short, so in conclusion – go read this book.

Next up:  In The Garden Of Beasts by Erik Larson