The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Book Thief
Book Review: "There were wooden teardrops and an oaky smile"
Summary: 5 Stars
Without an exageration I can say that it was one of the best books I ever read...
I finished the reading (i.e. listening) in cold Paris, March 2009 walking on the dark streets of this city. And the first thing I did after I finished was to go back to the beginning and to start it again....
"First the colors. Then the humans" - this is how it starts, the story told from the perspective of ... death personified. The narration brings some far but strong recollections of that used by Norman Mailer in his "The Castle in the Forest", but don't take it as criticism - in fact it is a praise....
What makes Zusak's book such increadible experience? First and foremost - his vacabulary, his parlance, his prose poetry. Bacause of these, you loose the sense of reading the novel, and you feel like you are reading the poetry...
"I can promise you that the world is a factory. The sun stirs it, the humans rule it. And I remain. I carry them away. "
"The girl loved that-- the shivering snow"
"She was the book thief without the words. Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain. "
"Despite the forced labor of breath, she fed the words through the gap in the doorway--between the mayor and the frame - to the woman. Such was her effort to breathe that the words escaped only a few at a time."
One of my friends told me, when recommended the book couple of weeks ago: "I did not know how one could live through the words as it is in the book" ...
But there is also something else. The book has deep meaning and strong message. It is about the most dark period of human history - Nazi Germany. It's about Jewish persecution and Holocaust. But it is also about forgivness, about love, about the simple fact that not all Germans were Nazi and not all Nazis were killers. It's about life in hard times, and about difficult greatness.
Book Review: "You don't always get what you wish for. Especially in Nazi Germany."
Summary: 5 Stars
Markus Zusak has given us an exquisite novel of Germans who did not subscribe to Hitler's teachings. Through the character of Liesel Meminger he weaves an achingly accurate story of what happened to Germans who chose not only to follow their own consciences but also to help the Jews.
The story is narrated by Death, an original concept, and Death is not the Grim Reaper you might imagine, but a compassionate entity that is charged with the unhappy task of carrying lost souls to eternity and must focus on the beauty of the colors rather than on the gruesome task at hand. Death is haunted by humans and the reader will undoubtedly be haunted by these magnificently created characters. From her foster parents, Hans and Rosa, to her best friend Rudy and to Max, the Jewish man hidden in her basement, the characters will come alive and burn in the reader's memory. They are fully defined and unforgettable in their passion and their sorrow.
Abandonment is a central theme in the novel as young Liesel (only nine when she is taken to live with a foster family) loses both her mother and brother in the early pages but has even more tragedies to befall her as the story moves on. This is a story of her courage and friendship, her love and her grief, as Death watches over her life on Himmel Street in suburban Munich. Bombings and death marches are common, but Liesel's obsession with stealing books and how she uses the words in them is the heart of this novel. Books become her friend, stealing them her obsession, and she finds in them the power to not only survive but to help those around her.
In an interview, the author explained why he made Liesel a book thief. He said, "I made Liesel be a book thief because words were so important in that time. Hitler destroyed people with words, he stole their minds, and Liesel kind of steals the words back, and some of the people. She steals Max back by sharing stories with him, and she makes people human again by reading to them in the shelters, by connecting with them. So it's like she steals the words back and rewrites a beautiful story through the ugly world that surrounds her."
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Book Review: 'Til deth do us return
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow, I would not have read this book if I had read what it was about before starting. What a surprise. I try not to get heavy on vacation. But, when you start reading it, it has a lightness of being and truth that caries you along. I read it at the beach, on the buss, and at friends' houses. It brought me quite time and thinking. When I mentioned it to people they said things like, "Oh those Nazi's were horrible." They missed the point. In California, Americans put put people of Japanese decent in concentration camps. People are people. We are all capable of being too good, and very bad. This is a revelation of human potential.Book Review: *** Applause!! ***
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't know what I can add to the reviews already posted about this exceptional book.
I was riveted to the saga, even as I was repelled by the gruesomeness (Is that a word?) of war and the repugnant things humans can do to each other. In a small way, it reminded me of the Coen Brother's movie Fargo - in which a very few pure, good humans shine amidst a crowd of despots and idiots. While there were no woodchippers, there was plenty of cruelty and gore, and just plain angst.
My hat is off to Mr Zusak for making Death human.
Book Review: ...just so you know...I hated this book for making me cry...
Summary: 4 Stars
It's amazing that I still get surprised whenever I find myself crying over a story such as this (there's Number the Stars, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, among others.) Yes, of course they're fiction...but the fact that their narratives elicit intense emotion says a lot on the horror that was the WWII (particularly the Holocaust), more than half a century from its occurrence. Even from someone with hardly any connection with Judaism (ancestral or cultural), it's actually very easy to feel abject sympathy and outright antipathy on the Jews' behalf. And, as a student of social science heralding senstivity for world cultures and peoples, I have to confess that it's quite difficult to stay unprejudiced about Germans.
But like All Quiet on the Western Front, which centered on the First War, The Book Thief also sheds light on the plight of Germany and the Germans themselves as they succumb under that iron fist of the NASDAP. A lot of them were also victims of war. They have also lost loved ones, as well as experienced crippling fear. The most relevant insight in this novel is the power of words, the sway of ideas. If one can't be brought over by words alone, then they shall be made so by sheer physical force. One then can see that not all Germans fit the portrayal of that blond, blue-eyed stiff, with that distinct, clipped accent (sorry, I'm generalizing) who stands indifferent to the existence of concentration camps and the desecration of Jewish, Romani, and even homosexual peoples and ideologies.
The Book Thief is, in a way, not that different from countless works done about WWII (nonfiction or otherwise, descriptive or propagandist). And yet, Zusak was still able to make his story thought-provoking. True, the blatant metaphorical prose of "Death" becomes a bit tiring after a while, what with all the reference to "colors" denoting a soul or the event of death. Also, the curtailing and foreshadowing of events, the shift from future to past to present events, clearly were not an original way of writing. However, the author, in my opinion, ably endeared the characters of Liesel, Hans Hubermann, Rudy, and Max. The tragedy that befell Himmel Street is exactly what it is--a tragedy (yes, despite the aforementioned foreshadowing, I still found myself blubbering by then). For me, the best parts of the novel were those that showed the depth of Hans' inner strength and compassion, both as a father and German in a growing Nazi Germany, and the depiction of Max's lyrical side as he finds succor and friendship for a Jew under a German roof. These two characters carry the weight of the story. I dare anyone not to be touched by them.
For a story mostly focused on the viewpoint of a young girl and her antics as a book thief, this can hardly be considered a novel for children (unless one were to censor and paraphrase some parts). It deals with a heavy subject matter, and is even intermittently graphic. Despite the attempt by "Death" to make light and symbolic his travail as a collector of souls, his sporadic quips on the oddity and wonder of humans, this novel is grave at the least; depressing at most. Still...I highly recommend it.