The Book Thief: Markus Zusak

I think I would say this book has been crafted rather than written. Every stunning sentence feels considered, every object, movement, weather feature personified. The story is told by a unique narrator, Death, who follows Liesel Meminger, a young German girl caught up in the events of World War Two. Death doesn’t have a direct interest in Liesel but she is surrounded by him, having lost her brother young, she is swiftly sent to live with a kindly couple on Himmel Street in the town of Molching. The events that follow are eye-opening, heartbreaking, but with plenty of humour too, and we see humanity at its best and worst. Liesel and her best friend Rudy Steiner make a captivating pair. The Hubermanns who become guardian angels are such rich characters. The relationship that blossoms between Liesel and her adoptive father, Hans is wonderful, he teaches her to read and her love of books as well as her confidence grows as a result. Although the love she receives from her adoptive mother, Rosa Hubermann is of a different, tougher form, it feels like a very genuine bond too. Actually, the first thing I noted down while reading The Book Thief was that this mother was “giving me a crash course in German insults” So there is humour to be found in a deeply layered book that is among the top books I’ve read this year. I only regret not reading it sooner, as it’s lingered on my kindle for years, however I read it at a moment when I needed it so maybe it actually found me at exactly the right time. Gorgeous book, touching, and extremely memorable. I’m really curious to watch the film now and see how it compares!

Wow, what can I say about this book? I heard about it on BookTok and bought it straight away and then stared at the cover for a while wondering what it was about and whether I would ever read it. When I started, I wasn’t too impressed. It felt slow to get into and I struggled with it around the first third. It didn’t feel like the book for me, the wrong genre, not very interesting and I wasn’t at all invested. Well, how things change! I loved this book, and it was one of the best reads this year. I cried numerous times and felt my heart being ripped out at multiple places. The book takes you through the everyday lives of normal, Germans through World War two. It’s not a perspective I have read a lot about previously. Leisel is taken to a foster family who isn’t your average people of the time, they hold unfavourable views of Jews at the time, though despite being hardworking they also have very little money, living in a very poor part of the country in a rough street. The book is told from the perspective of Death, which is intriguing. The plot jumps around a little which can be confusing at first, but you soon get used to it. While he is exceptionally busy during the war, he is so fascinated by Leisel, the book thief, he can’t help but watch her every time he is in the area and see how she is doing. These humans haunt him. I have never read a book with such strong characters, I fell totally in love with some of them, particularly Hans and Max. the relationships in the book are the most beautiful, many tears were shed especially during and at the end. The way Hans takes in Leisel and becomes her truly loving father shows his immense character but the way he also takes in Max and hides him as payback for his father's death also shows this. Max teaches Leisel so many things, amongst them, love, and compassion. He is like her big brother. The books he makes for her are so special and beautifully described. While I loved Max, Leisel and Rudy (Leisel’s best friend) Hans was my favourite character. This was one of the most impactful books I have ever read, and it will stay with me for a long time. It is beautifully written with some great phrases. The relationships make the book but the setting, the care, the love shown despite diversity is astounding.

Has anyone got a mop and bucket for my tears? I sure could use one right now. What a read and what a last part to the book, I don’t think I drew breath. This will be a short review so that I don’t spoil and because my heart is mush right now. In terms of writing style and narrative, I think this is one of the quirkiest books I’ve ever read. Death was the narrator and Leisel was the protagonist. Each chapter was only a few pages and the saddest story in history was often told with an air of amusement in the background. Leisel’s story was both ordinary and profound, her childhood before coming to live with her adoptive parents was brutal but she was resilient and kept some innocence about her. I adored her papa, Hans, just as Leisel clearly did. Their bond and connection was beautiful to read. Her mama and papa took steps to support the Jews and this formed a significant part of the story. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness. This story transported me to the context of a Germany under Nazi rule. More importantly, it transports the reader to an average Joe perspective, village life and an example of good German people just trying to survive the hideousness of war and the regime they were under. Told over decades, this was both a light-hearted and heavy and emotionally-laden tale. This isn’t a 5 star read for me because the writing style was strange, I won’t say that I ever got on with it, but I rubbed along with it because of the great story and characters. I am left feeling very affected by the reading experience and that I may be a bit too emotionally raw to discuss this at bookclub tomorrow. Oops!

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is set in Nazi Germany and the unusual narrator is Death. He tells the tale of Liesel Memenger, a young girl sent to live with a German couple by her 'communist' mother. The relationships between Liesel and her adoptive parents, Rosa and Hans Hubermann, form the basis for this evocative book, but all along the spectre of Nazi Germany haunts them as much as Death himself. Liesel does not want to live with the Hubermann's and the hard rules of Rosa make the transition difficult, but the quiet understanding of Hans brings her out of herself and they soon begin to use words to form a strong bond. Liesel also makes friends with her young neighbour Rudy Steiner, a beautiful character obsessed with Jesse Owens who, like Liesel and Hans, show the caring side of humanity in stark contrast to the inhumanity of the other characters in the book, from committed Nazi's to those who turn a blind eye to the suffering of others in order to save their own skins. There are many stories within the story too. For example, we witness a committed Nazi sympathiser shopkeeper turn into a woman bowed by grief due to the actions of her only remaining son and Hans himself has an illuminating backstory which is only revealed when Max Vandenburg comes to stay, putting the family at great risk as he is Jewish. Hans is in debt to Max's father who saved his life in the First World War and through these dangerous circumstances, Liesel soon comes to love her new secret friend, who whitewashes over his talisman, a copy of Mein Kampf, to write and illustrate her a story as a gift when he has nothing else he can give. It is moments like these, the minutiae of everyday life in Nazi Germany, that makes this book so special, because when combined with the terrible events that affect the ordinary people caught up in the war, we can see and feel history and herein lies the skill of Zusak. The Australian author has said that the book was inspired by two real life events that his parents told him about; the bombing of Munich and a teenage boy offering bread to an emaciated Jew being marched through the streets that ended with both the boy and the Jewish prisoner being whipped by a soldier. A number one New York Times bestseller, the book is marketed for both older children and adults and I believe this book is a fine example of a novel that crosses readerships. It should be read by all and this life-affirming, thought-provoking story will live on in your mind long after you have turned the last page. Truly a book that should be read by all. 10/10 #TheBookThief #MarkusZusak

This is one of the most unusual ways of telling a story I have ever read. The main narrator is Death who is a collector of peoples souls as they die. They tell the story based around a young girl, Liesel, displaced by the Nazis in Germany during the second world war. You cannot help but like Liesel who learns to read by stealing books and how she has to learn to live under Nazi rule whilst helping a Jew escape persecution. The book shines a light on how life was in Germany during the war.. Mr Death does disclose the future deaths of certain characters but rather than spoil the plot it adds to it. A very quirky way of telling a great story that completely works. Recommended.

I don't often bother to review a much reviewed book, especially when I agree with most of the other reviewers, but this is such a beautiful book that I had to write something in praise of it. The story follows a period in life of Liesel, a little girl who has had a tough start in life and finds herself fostered with a strange couple during the rise of Nazi Germany. She discovers a love of books after stealing one early on in her troubles, and this love brings her closer to her new foster father and later to a Jewish man in hiding. The style of the book is unusual but very effective. The narrator, Death, leads through Liesel's life with a light-hearted tone that makes some of the difficult moments easier to bear. Each chapter begins with a little list of what's to come. Some, but not all, of the deaths of characters are announced long before they happen, a unique method of plotting but it really works. Somehow, knowing that a particular character was going to die and even how they were going to die, well in advance, was a relief to me as a reader and I was able to relax into the reading, rather than feeling the tension of knowing that something bad was coming, but not knowing what it was. I found this book such a pleasure to read. It's beautifully written. I fell in love with several of the characters, was amused, moved and shocked during reading and I cried a little at the end. I highly recommend it. It has definitely moved into my personal list of beloved books. I suspect that it may be a book that people will still be talking about and recommending for years to come. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kindle edition: perfect formatting and no typos or errors. Download it now! :)

This book about a young girl in a small town in Germany during the Second World War has been very widely lauded, but I had rather mixed feelings about it. There were some moving and dramatic scenes, for example where Hans, Liesel and Rudy risk being beaten by guards when smuggling bread to starving Jewish prisoners, or many of the scenes involving Max, the Jew whom Liesel and her family are hiding in their basement. The final section was very tragic and moving, though the events were told in a reverse order that I thought reduced their dramatic impact. However, for me the fundamental problem was that the whole story was supposedly narrated by Death (a very busy being during the War, obviously) and this gave the book a fantasy feeling that I found difficult to square with the sombre nature of the material. Apart from Liesel, Hans and to some extent Max, the characters all seemed rather unreal, almost cartoon-like in being fairly simple sketches of types of people rather than real characters. This meant that for me the novel lacked the impact it is clearly meant to have and which it has clearly had on many readers. I'm glad I have read it, but for me this didn't really work. It will be interesting to see how the book's unsual approach is translated onto the big screen - film posters have started to appear in London as I am finishing this.

This book is set in Germany during the second world war. The story leads up to some tragic events which are revealed quite early in the book by the narrator - Death. But this spoiler doesn't matter because the narrative voice of Death is lively (!) and original and his turns of phrase and way of seeing the world keeps the book moving along nicely for the larger part. Some of the narrators one liners about the Nazi's are pretty good zingers and it's cheering to think that Death, along with all good guys in fiction-dom, hates Nazi's too. However, the middle of the book became a bit of a plough, quite a bit of padding to pace out the book. Namely when Max turns up to stay. Somehow this isn't as exciting as it should be. Maybe because Max is a safe character: Max is an interesting and well drawn character but somehow I didn't find him believable in his actions and speech and day dreams about boxing HItler. Is that all? Just a day dream about a punch up? I found my self breezing over a few pages just past the middle point, it all seemed to lose it's momentum and I really had to make myself finish it even though I couldn't put it down to begin with. A few of the characters were more saccharine and too good to be true than I usually like to read but overall it was a good book but I don't felt it was as honest as it could have been because it didn't feel like a book for grown ups. I feel that the tough short 'mama' juxtaposed against the lovely Jew-friendly 'papa' felt untrue. I felt like I was reading a German version of Anne of Green Gables - the War Years. Here was kind, shy Matthew who indulges the orphan girl. Here is tough, upright Marilla who shows tough love to the orphan, and here is biblophile orphan Anne Shirley (book theif) trying to prove her worth, competing with a German Gilbert Blythe who she resists him and competes with him at the same time. I liked the book, but I'd have enjoyed it more if it had been written for adults i.e. more true to what adults are all really like. This could have been a a really brave and honest book, then. All of the characters who matter to the protagonist have been rolled in sugar. Such a ratio of sugar coated goodies made me wonder where were all the baddies? The baddies have to be imagined as the reader joins Max in imagining Hitler and imagining what happened to Max's family and the Book Thief's parents. Perhaps this fits a book about books set during a period of history where all the worst things people can do was done on an industrial scale, and have since been written about on a massive scale. One of the themes of the book for me was just what the mind can be imagined away as well as imagined into existence, and how books feed such imaginings: how can such cold blooded crimes against humanity be happening just down the road, just in the next town, or in next country? How could it be imagined then or now? And this book left me with the question - should the author have tried to imagine it for us - is that one of the jobs of young adult literature?

very excited to read! hear lots of great things about it

رواية رائعة مليئة بالاقتباسات و تشدك بالاحداث و فكرة ان الرواية تُروى عن طريق الموت متجسد بشكل شخصي و مطّلع على شخصيات الرواية اضافت جمال و أسلوب سرد جمييييل ، استمتعت فيها بكل تفاصيلها و الشخصيات و الاحداث مختارة بعناية 👍🏻👍🏻

A wonderful story I could not put the book down until the end.

The Book Thief is one of the most beautiful and soul-touching books I’ve ever read. Markus Zusak takes an incredibly hard and painful subject and tells it with such tenderness, depth, and sensitivity that it stays with you long after you’ve finished. Every character feels alive, every moment is written with emotion, and the storytelling is simply breathtaking. I loved everything about this book, it’s a rare gem that moves you, changes you, and stays in your heart forever.

It’s a dark story yet beautiful. The only complaint I have, is that death(the narrator) could’ve been more elegant in its descriptions. I would say that the book is close to a masterpiece 😁