Saturday, August 28, 2021

The Book Thief

 Death is an interesting narrator. 

During WWII Death was busy carrying souls to "the great conveyor belt in the sky." For Liesel , she was adopted by a German husband and wife in a small German town. Death visits her only a few times throughout her life to take the people around her and finds her own story and curiosity gets the better of him. Liesel is not only dealing with the death of her brother and the abandonment of her mother, not being able to read, and simply growing up, but her new family agrees to hide a Jew in their basement and the air raids start.

As I said before, Death is an interesting narrator. He gives us a different kind of impending doom and anticipation throughout the story because he already knows his schedule of dates with everyone. He tells us on occasion that this person is going to die, or s/he doesn't live very long after this or that. The narration is exceptional at humanizing the world in the story and making me cry. (PSA: Don't try running while listening to the ending of the book, you won't be able to breathe, which is needed when being on a treadmill. 

Characterization is on point and we easily love most/if not all of the characters in the story. Upon reflection, I do wish Liesel herself had a little bit more going for her besides liking books, stealing, and being against Hitler. Just a quirk or two. Everyone else seemed to be so well thought out (not that she wasn't, I just suddenly want more from Liesel). 

WWI/I stories are always hard. Maybe because it's so "fresh," we know so much about it, and there is more of a human element  because photographs and videos and documentation are so easy to come by. And if people are "lucky," they still have soldiers and family members who were witnesses so are still alive--though the number of living WWII vets is dwindling as the years go on. There are monuments, there are museums, there are very prevalent stories of people who were there. That being said, I become very picky about the WWI/I stories that I read because I know I will cry my eyes out and that is an emotional rollercoaster that is simply exhausting. This is one of the few books about that time period that I'd willing read over again. The characterization and the love I have for them, hits well and hard. 

I saw a review for this saying that Death is ridiculous and his narration style is obnoxious. He has a very flowery use of metaphors and similes, it is true. I happen to enjoy his descriptions. They are different, but Death is different from everyone else. So I give it to him.

I very much enjoy this book, but can only read it occasionally (this time it was an audiobook and that was fantastically read!). The movie is pretty good, but they take Death out of it all together, which made me sad and turned it into "just another WWII story." 

No comments:

Post a Comment