Let’s start by being completely honest. I got the reading list for this class in July and immediately ordered most of the books online. When I got them, I saw The Book Thief and thought, “Wow, this is a large book. I’m going to start with this one to get it out of the way.” So, that was three months ago. Fear not, I remember a lot of it, and I definitely remember the things I did like and the things I didn’t like.
There were a lot of things I liked about this book. On the surface, it really is an enjoyable story to read with lots of interesting characters and events. But there’s so much more to it. Some of the “periphery” things the author used I had never seen before, like the introductions to each part featuring each section. It’s simply telling the reader what’s coming up, but it also piques interest in what those things might be. Also, the little inserted statements throughout the book were interesting. At first I was afraid they would become distracting, but they didn’t, they really added to what was going on. And of course, they come from the narrator, not from the subject of the story, which adds another dimension to what is going on. In fact, let’s talk about the narrator.
When I realized what was going on with the narrator, on about page two, I literally rolled my eyes. I thought this was another author trying to be clever with the death narrator and as I have borne witness to before I don’t like it when authors try to be clever with no good reason. I’m judgmental like that. But then I got to more and more of the little inserted statements coming from the narrator, and I realized that those are not possible without the narrator being not just some omniscient third person narrator but an actual character who can see things and react to things. And I really enjoyed those little statements and what they added to the book. Soon after starting the book I had to ask myself, “Wait, do I actually like the death narrator?” How disarming. Then, when I was finished, I got to the author’s interview in the back of the book where they ask about the narrator, and his explanation made total sense. He tried different things, they didn’t work, and not even the death narrator was working at first but he figured it out later.
Okay, I’ll move on. As this is historical fiction, I really liked how accurately the book portrayed everything from that era. I don’t know any more than the average person about Nazi Germany, and so I really appreciated the subtle details that made the story and the historical era a lot more personal. Things like the Hitler Youth or Hans’s wrestling on whether to join the Nazi party, or even the simple telling of how people tried to get work or had to cut back on Rosa’s services. Those types of historical details showed a true humanity in the midst of the madness and showed a beautiful picture of how Germany was not just a bunch of people yelling, “Heil, Hitler,” but there was compassion, hope, and love.
Okay, now allow me to talk about something that I both liked and disliked at the same time, and that is the “story arc” of the book. As I was reading, I just didn’t feel like the book was driving towards anything, you know? I really didn’t feel like there was a big climax, just a lot of little things happening throughout the book. Of course, the bombing is the big deal, but even with that I didn’t feel like the rest of the book was driving towards it, I just felt like it was another event that happened, albeit “bigger” than the others. I liked this aspect of the book because that’s really how life is. Life doesn’t drive toward one big event and then everything is resolved and we all sit down and have pie. Life is simply events strung together to make us the person we are, which is exactly what happened to Liesel. So I really liked that. On the other hand…it’s a book. Books traditionally drive toward a climax and when I got to the end I felt like I hadn’t really gotten anywhere. I had enjoyed the story, but I didn’t feel like I had reached an end point. So, to that end, I guess I shouldn’t say I disliked it, but it was different than what I was expecting, and almost a little unsatisfying.
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While I did not read this book, it sounds very interesting. I too would have wondered why the author chose Death as the narrator, but I guess it has the same sort of appeal that Death had in the film *Meet Joe Black.* The idea that Death is curious about a life of one of the millions of people that it kills makes us, as the audience, stop and think about the aspents of our lives that are mundane and extraordinary. Clearly, with this book, the mian characters life was full of extraordinary events. It is too bad that you felt the arc of the story was not very strong, but, I think that is sometimes hard to do in books about war when the events usually happen without much warning. You might expect something to happen and the characters might too, but during a war nothing is really predictable and it would be difficult for the character to build that sense of suspense and anticipation for the big climactic event. Anyhoo, the book sounds interesting and maybe if I ever have some free time again in my life, I will give it a read!
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