Why we love The Book Thief: Everything about this book is brilliant.
This was a tough one, particularly when reading in a quiet Munich U-Bahn and trying not to cry and failing miserably. Right from the start, this book had us hooked.
First the colours. Then the humans. That’s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try. ***HERE IS A SMALL FACT*** You are going to die.
And the ‘I’ here is none other than Death himself. This is not much of a spoiler, we promise, you catch on to this extraordinary narrator pretty quickly. And considering the period this story is set in, Death had his hands full. So to read a story about a book thief, a little girl named Liesel in 1939 Germany, from the perspective of Death is really something.
The impact of experiencing a story set in an extremely difficult time, from the eyes of a child, is wild. (To Kill a Mockingbird anyone?) It could just be a story of a little girl named Liesel, who loves books and words, who loves her accordion playing foster father, who spends her days playing with her best friend Rudy who has two goals in life:
#1 Run as fast as Jesse Ownes
#2 Get one kiss from Liesel.
Seemingly, an ordinary childhood. But all the while you read this, you know what is going to happen. It’s anything but ordinary. But to Liesel and Rudy, it’s the only one they knew.
All Liesel wanted to do was read books (sure, she had to steal them from book burnings and such), play with Rudy, love her foster parents, and help her fighter friend Max (who just happened to be Jewish) but why was it so difficult to do that? Very early on in the book, Liesel states, “I hate the Führer.” She comes to this conclusion very simply (and it’s a difficult one to digest): the fact that political ideologies, hate and greed translates to Liesel no longer being able to see or talk to her mother, having to bury her brother who suddenly died, or live a childhood where Death isn’t waiting at your doorstep.
A lot of people have said this book is slow but we couldn’t get through it fast enough. Markus Zusak knows to weave his words and it’s a heartbreaker.
Our favorite quotes from the book
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