The first thing you need to know about the book is that it's narrated by Death. And he's actually quite funny and personable. He's also very blunt, stating outright that everyone dies eventually. You might think Death would be a depressing narrator but he's not. And if you think about it, death is one of the only guarantees we have in our life. It's only natural that he would be honest. Death tends to jump around in his narration, talking about things out of order. This means that there are spoilers in the book and instead of preparing you for what's to come, they seem to make it worse when you finally get there.
The book takes place in Germany, from 1939 to the end of the war. Liesel is a young girl who is taken to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann, who are to be her new parents. She becomes friends with the neighbor boy, Rudy Stiener, who has a major crush on her and is always asking for a kiss. The Hubermanns eventually hide a Jew, a young man named Max. He and Liesel become very good friends and she is very upset when he chooses to leave. Liesel is the book thief the title refers to; she steals books and together she and Hans read them. I can't really get into more detail because this is a book that should be read and not spoiled. There is so much and it's so powerful.
The way Zusak writes is so interesting. Each part of the book is titled based on the book that is featured in that section. You can gather from the title of the book that books are important to the storyline. The part titles are The Grave Digger's Handbook, The Shoulder Shrug, Mein Kampf, The Standover Man, The Whistler, The Dream Carrier, The Complete Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus, The Word Shaker, The Last Human Stranger, and The Book Thief. The book titles are important to what happens in that part. Sometimes you don't realize the significance until the part is over. Zusak also introduces the chapter titles by writing "featuring" and then listing a series of events or topics that are covered in the section. It's very different from your normal novel, which is what makes it so interesting. Throughout the book, Death interjects with little fun facts or pieces of conversation, written in bold and set apart from the rest of the text. In the part The Complete Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus, the interjections are definitions of different words that are important to the story. The parts The Standover Man and The Word Shaker are actually about books that Max writes for Liesel, and The Book Thief is about the book that Liesel writes about her life. Zusak completely wrote the two stories and included them in the novel, complete with illustrations.
A page from The Word Shaker
I won't lie, the book is sad. It's heartbreaking and will make you cry. But it's absolutely beautiful. It's so different from your typical novel about the World Wars. It's through the eyes of Death, who is telling the story through the eyes of a child. And it's about Germans, who are the "bad guys". But Zusak makes these Germans human, capable of pity and understanding. It's a seriously incredible book. One reviewer said "It's the kind of book that can be life changing" and I agree. It's a powerful book about people and the choices they are faced with. As Death says:
"I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words so damning and brilliant."
As you probably know, last year The Book Thief was made into a movie. I recently saw the movie, and you can find my thoughts on it here:http://moviegeek92.blogspot.com/2014/04/words-are-life.html
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