Review of The Book Thief

The Book Thief

Author: Marcus Zusak

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Publication date: March 2006 (USA)

    Unlike Liesel Meminger, I may not have enough words for the brilliance and agony of this story. Thankfully, Marcus Zusak did. Death is the narrator. It is 1939 in Nazi Germany. Liesel’s little brother is dead and her shattered world will begin to tentatively rebuild when she picks up one book beside his grave. Left with foster parents and terrorized by her dreams, Liesel finds comfort in words and books. Her own story is one of halting wonder as she begins learning to read, fear and danger when her new family hides a Jew in their basement, and indescribable pain when she loses both her words and her world once more. 

    In The Book Thief, passionate emotions, colors, and language strangely blend in an aching harmony. The conflations of sight and smell and touch and taste become an oddly sane view of the world from Death’s perspective. This story is certainly not one for audiences below sixth or seventh grade because of the depth of feeling and brutalities integral to the story. The Book Thief is well-written, as rich and bitter as dark chocolate, depressing, and extremely thoughtful and thought-provoking. I highly recommend it to any reader who is willing to have their senses and sensibilities wrenched at the same time.

    With Death narrating, our first assumption would be that The Book Thief is bound to be dark and gory. And it is dark - it is about a girl who is abandoned by her mother in the midst of war. However, Death both accentuates and lightens the darkness of the story. He speaks of carrying souls from children who have died from bombs and cold, but he also speaks of noticing colors to keep himself sane (at least as sane as Death can be). There are also moments of witty relief, such as when Death says “It kills me sometimes, how people die.”

    Learning about Nazi Germany in history class conveys the scope and scale of the horror, but the magnitude of it all can overwhelm a personal perspective.  Numbers and facts and even pictures don’t necessarily let us really see the people themselves. Oddly, words do. Marcus Zusak’s words almost luxuriate in the potent, stabbing, inevitable grief of terrible loss.  There are times when Marcus Zusak’s metaphors and sensory combinations overwhelm or confuse, but that’s not often. His characters are beautifully drawn and realistically flawed. And we lose them. They are taken not by cancer or old age or even by Death, but by their fellow humans. By bombs and fear and hunger and hate. Especially towards the end of the story, I had to set the book down because I could only take the constantly impending horror in small doses. But I came back.  And I was as sorry as I was relieved when it was done. Just as we learn to regard Death as part of a story rather than merely its end, we learn to appreciate loss as something that colors and accentuates everything beautiful.

    To the kids reading this review - please read this book. It will make you think, it will make you cry, and it will open your eyes to just how much beautiful language can affect a reader. To the adults reading this - you will be better able to engage with this story in terms of its historical context than kids will. Lastly, to parents - please read this with your children if you can, but consider their emotional maturity first. The combination of perspective, language, and history in The Book Thief makes a wonderful story to both read and discuss.

- D. K. Nuray