Book Review – The Book Thief

I think that it could be fun to start letting you know about the good books that I happen to find along my way.

A friend recommended that I read The Book Thief last week, so I put the digital copy on hold at the library and then waited my turn.

It arrived on Sunday, and by Monday evening, I had finished reading the entire thing. It was that good. From start to finish, I read the book in about seven hours.

I won’t tell you the entire story in hopes that spoiling it for you will not take place. I’ll just give a few tidbits to motivate you to read it as well.

With Death as the narrator, we discover Nazi Germany through the eyes of a non-Jewish girl and her family. It is an incredible narration.

Markus Zusak, who wrote this book and is getting much-deserved acclaim for it, found such interesting ways to describe things. At one point, when some Nazis knocked on the door, he described the door as “humming” afterwards because they had hit it so hard. That is just a small example of the thousands of ways inside the book that be brings things to life. It was magical to read because of his unique descriptions.

I’ve never experienced something written like this, and it was a sheer joy to read (other than the content subject, of course). I found myself wishing that I could write like this.

I really felt like I was there in the book with the characters. On Zimmel Street, in the basement, on the track, etc. You will experience the same thing, I hope.

And by the end of the book, I sobbed for the characters. It’s easy to love each and every one of them. Zusak is a true master at winding a story.

The story is clean with no language (at least not in English) and no physical interaction that made me want to skip ahead. I would recommend it for any age starting around twelve and up.

In fact, I wish kids and adults alike would read it. I think that we forget the horrors of war and often take our freedoms for granted. This story was a great reminder to me that freedom, or an impossible conquest to rule the world and eradicate “inadequate” races, for that matter, is never free. Someone has to pay.

When I finished, I found out that I needed to read more from Zusak. So I just began another of his books, I Am The Messenger.

Please read The Book Thief. You will be glad that you did.