The Book Thief

By Markus Zusak

In a heartwarming book set in a not-so heartwarming Nazi Germany, World War II rages around a girl as she learns to read with her foster father, and then embarking on a career of book-stealing.

Liesel Meminger is travelling in a train with her brother and mother, but then suddenly, due to a coughing fit, her brother dies. The train stops due to faulty track work and then, two train guards decide that the three of them should be sent to the nearest township. There, her brother is buried. It is only when her mother drags her away that she notices a small black book on the ground and takes it.

Then it is revealed that the mother is sending Liesel away to foster parents. Liesel nearly breaks down when it is time to say goodbye, but say goodbye she does, and she meets her new parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. One tall man and one squat lady. Later in the night, Liesel sleeps, and the narrator, Death, tells us the name of the black book: The Grave Digger's Handbook.

Slowly, Liesel begins to feel closer to Hans. He visits Liesel in the night when she has her nightmares, and comforts her. Hans paints and plays in bars for a living, while Rosa washes clothes. In a football match on the street, she meets her future best friend, Rudy Steiner. After a bed-wetting incident, Hans finds the book which Liesel had hidden under the bed. To help her read, Hans decides to teach her the alphabet. Soon later, they finish The Grave Digger's Handbook, and Liesel receives two books for Christmas: Faust the Dog and The Lighthouse. The war starts and Rosa starts losing her customers.

On Hitler's birthday, a bonfire is lit in celebration. In the remains of the fire, Liesel finds a few unburnt things, and steals one of the three books: The Shoulder Shrug. Liesel thinks that she has been seen by the mayor's wife, who is one of Rosa's customers. Luckily, the mayor's wife doesn't say anything when she delivers the washing. Then, one day, the mayor's wife brings Liesel to her library. Then the story switches to a basement where a Jew is hiding, a Jew named Max, who is revealed to have some connection to Hans. Liesel continues through her summer, reading The Shoulder Shrug every night, reading in the mayor's library, where Liesel finds out that the mayor had a son, who died in World War I. She plays soccer with Rudy, and finds a secret food-stealing group and joins them.

Max Vandenburg travels to see Hans, with a map, key and ticket hidden in a copy of Mein Kampf. Liesel and Rudy continue their stealing adventures, but then their leader, Arthur Berg, moves to Cologne. Max reaches Hans's house, and Death tells the story of Hans in World War II, where his life is saved by a Jew named Erik Vandenburg, who later died. Hans went to visit his wife and his son, and offered his help. Max's friend, Walter Kugler, visited him and they made a plan.

Max's history is told, and we learn that he enjoyed a good fistfight, which was where he met his friend, Walter. Then came Kristallnacht, the night of the broken glass. Walter came to bring him away, leaving Max's family behind, where he hid until he left to see Hans. Hans warns Liesel that if she tells anyone, everyone she knows will be taken away for questioning. Max sleeps in the basement, where he is covered up with some cleverly placed drop sheets and paint cans. 

Due to it being winter, the basement is freezing, and as such, Max sleeps with Hans and Rosa in the living room with a fire. Liesel asks if Mein Kampf is any good, and thus begins a storytelling phase between Liesel and Max, and slowly a friendship develops. It rolls around to Liesel's birthday, and in addition to The Mud Men, Max decides to give her something. He produces a small booklet called The Standover Man. Through the summer, the tension of hiding Max seems to ease a little. Then the mayor fires Rosa, and Liesel is infuriated and calls out the mayor's wife of hiding from the world. Liesel and Rudy join their stealing group again, except their new leader is a boy named Viktor Chemmel, a rude boy who only steals for fun. He gives Rudy and Liesel only one lousy apple, which causes Rudy to insult Chemmel, who attacks him. 

Liesel and Rudy go to the mayor's house and Liesel steals a book which she had been reading there: The Whistler. After a few weeks, they bump into Chemmel's group and he throws the book into the river. Fortunately, Rudy fetches it. Just a few days before Christmas, Liesel brings down some snow from outside into the basement, where they play. Then, disaster strikes and Max becomes seriously ill. He is moved to Liesel's bedroom, where he sleeps. Liesel reads to Max in an attempt to wake him up, but to no avail. 

She steals one more book from the mayor's library, The Dream Carrier. Then Max wakes up. The NSDAP start checking basements to see if they were the adequate depth for bomb shelters. She warns Hans and they decide to do nothing, trying to evade the notice of the Nazis. Fortunately, Max goes unnoticed.

One more book (A Song in the Dark) for Liesel from the library, but then Rudy notices a black dictionary against the window of the mayor's library. Liesel steals The Complete Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus, but then they discover a note for Liesel in the dictionary, one that entails how the mayor's wife let Liesel steal the books. During a raid, Liesel starts to read aloud from her books, and this transforms the shelter into a reading session.

A period of peace lasts, and an offer from Frau Holtzapfel, the Hubermanns' long time antagonist, comes. Liesel reading in exchange from her coffee ration. Thousands of Jews are paraded right before Liesel's eyes, and in stupid move Hans goes to offer bread to one of them. This results in both of them being whipped, and he realizes that the Nazis will come for him, and they will find Max. Max has to go, but Hans does not find him at the appointed place four days later. He waits for his punishment, but none comes.

Two men in coats come for Rudy, but Alex and Barbara, his parents, refuse. Hans's application to the NSDAP is approved and he is drafted into the war. Alex Steiner, too, is sent to the war. Rudy is furious and goes off on a rage to kill Hitler, accompanied by Liesel, but they soon return. For a Christmas present, Liesel is given Max's sketchbook: The Word Shaker, a collection of Max's thoughts and a story about a girl who collected words that grew from trees.

The mayor's wife gives Liesel some cookies, and she steals her last book: The Last Human Stranger. After an accident with a truck, Hans's leg is broken and he returns home. After an air raid, they notice a crashed plane, where Rudy places the teddy bear and the pilot dies.

During yet another parade of Jews, Liesel finds Max. She rushes over to him, and then first Max is whipped, then Liesel. She falls to her knees, while Max is marched away. She chases him, then is brought down by Rudy. After a book-tearing incident in the mayor's library, the mayor's wife gives her a small book to write her own autobiography inside.

Then the bombs rain down on the street where they all live, and everyone dies. Rudy, Hans, Rosa. All of them, except for Liesel, who awakes from the basement where she had been writing in her book. A horrible discovery awaits her, and slowly, as she discovers everyone she has loved is now dead, she disintegrates.

The mayor brings her to his house, where she meets Alex Steiner after the war, and then she finds Max, still alive, still breathing. Finally, Death takes Liesel and shows her, her book, which he had found.

This book is really a magnificent masterpiece, one that brilliantly entails how the Nazis changed life in Germany and a touching story about a girl and a Jew, an unlikely pairing.

Every page of this novel has at least one beautifully crafted metaphor that personifies and brings to life the non-living things in the book, and the emotions of the people around them are excellently shown. The novel's vivid descriptions let you really escape to Himmel Street, where they live. I get the feeling that this novel is born from the emotions of the humans, the relationships of everyone erupting around this common feeling: Love. Not love as in the flirty kind, but real love, the kind reserved for parents.

The topic of Hitler is touched upon in this book, and is most visible in Max Vandenburg, who has first-hand experienced the cruelty of Hitler and his Nazis. His flight from his family is perhaps the most regretful experience of his life, the cause of which, we all know, is the Nazis. We really can understand his feelings that are so incredibly described by Zusak, who plays like a virtuoso on a fleeing Jew's nightmares. In our mind's eyes, Max bursts to life.

The interesting proposition of Death as a narrator is a brain stroke by Zusak, who not only manages to bring the 'Grim Reaper' to life, but also as someone with whom we can empathize with. He humanizes Death, so that instead of getting a creepy picture of a Death who says supercilious things and is malicious and hateful, we get a Death who is bored of his eternal existence, and who is haunted with the thought of the survivors. Zusak describes death to normal people as Death carrying their souls away in his soft arms, to wherever they go next. Zusak even tears apart the old saying, 'War is death's best friend', and explores the possibility of God.

Liesel is yet another interesting character in Zusak's menagerie, the protagonist. At the beginning, she loses her brother, and so we can immediately see that she is the one who will struggle through loss, the one that will continue fighting no matter how hard the going gets. She is the tough one. But then, there are her nightmares, which are horribly fleshed out. The relationship with Rudy slowly develops from a platonic friendship, to something else, something above that. But then Rudy dies and she is left to kiss his dead lips. That moment truly is a tragedy, a culmination of Zusak's masterful writing and your emotions. The mental image is just so strong that you can't help but see it.

Zusak describes the sky as masterfully as he can, showing all the colors through the eyes of Death, who needs some distractions and turns to the sky for help. The strong and vivid colors are shown through the black and white of the letters.

On the flip side, however, the metaphors can be a drag for those who are looking for quick reading. Perhaps this is some device of Zusak's, to slow down your reading so that you can digest it better, but for myself it was a bit irritating to go that slow and take three minutes just to digest two or three pages.

Strangely enough, Zusak chooses to spoil the ending, and that kind of puts a damper on the emotions he wants you to feel.

All in all, while this may not be perfect, it certainly breaches the gate of greatness.

Rating: 8.7/10
Advice: Highly recommended reading.

The Reviewer hopes that you can enjoy this post and comment!

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