Julia W. reviewed About the lives of (not so) ordinary Germans during Wold War II on 9/17/2008 + 32 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 9

8/13/08 The story takes place in a small town outside of Munich, during WWII. The narrator of the story is death, first introduced to us as nine year old Liesel Meminger witnesses the death of her younger brother, as they are sent to live with foster parents. Liesel is illiterate, but after she witnesses the death of her brother she picks up a book, "The Gravedigger's Handbook", and winds up hiding it under her mattress at her new foster parents, Hans and Rosa. Ultimately, we see the relationship of Hans and Liesel develop as he spends nights reading with her and teaching her to read. Liesel's love of books is kindled and shortly later, she begins her book "thievery" starting at a Nazi book burning and continuing with a relationship she develops with the mayor's wife, who has a private library. Which develops into a love of storytelling and writing, which ultimately, saves her life.

While I won't go into much more detail about the plot, there are several things that endeared this book to me. The first is the well-rounded and developed characters that Zusak creates - from Liesel, to her best friend Rudy and the young Jewish man Max that Rosa and Hans hide in their basement. Second, Zusak re-creates wartime suburban Munich with such detail in the day to day life of Germans as they attempted to survive this war and this time. Finally, Zusak's use of death as the narrator was a master stroke for this book. However, it is not just his use of death as the narrator, but attributes of death. Death is not a vengeful, mean, evil force in "The Book Thief", but a removed, dispassionate observer - even aghast at what is happening in this terrible time and place.

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