The Book Thief Musings
Before I talk about The Book Thief, I should probably mention the story I read before. The End of Everything by Megan Abbott. I was supposed to write a whole post about this novel, though it never materialised. I was going to write something now, but in the wake of The Book Thief, no words will ever be enough.
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
Have you ever read a book and realised that you’ve waited your whole life for something so utterly wonderful as the words on those pages?
I’m crying, which is making my cold worse and my head ache. I hate it and yet I love each tear as it strolls down my face because this is what fiction is all about.
I’ve very particular about fiction and this is why. I don’t mind the odd book with a carefree storyline of nothing of real worldly significance. But all in all, this is what I look for in a story. A book that can make me laugh and cry. A story that makes my heart swell in my chest with each and every chapter. Words which, when put together, make me feel like everything finally makes sense.
I cry for the story and I cry because the story is over.
And it was so perfect.
So utterly perfect that I’m not quite sure what else I have to say.
Only read on if you’ve read The Book Thief or don’t mind knowing how it ends.
The narrator is Death. And what an amazing narrator he is too. I assume he’s a he, probably because the author is male and somehow it’s a masculine voice I hear.
He ‘spoils’ the story before and it’s over and somehow, that’s okay…he makes it okay. It’s his story, well, it’s Liesel’s story told by him, so it’s okay.
There are few things in life that make my heart break so jaggedly and this book, quite frankly, is the epitome of my heart break.
Liesel loses every single person in her life when she’s just fourteen years old. She didn’t have them in her life for most of it, they didn’t get to see her grow up and that’s the most heartbreaking part of the whole story.
War time, Germany, a world which I love to read about and yet I’ve never really read a story from the point of view of the Nazis before. Not that it’s really the Nazis. But they’re almost forced into being on the side of the Nazis, which is something I rarely end up reading stories about.
I really don’t know what else to say, except to type up the piece I wrote on paper and have since used as a bookmark, from near the start of the book.
There are so many judgements made about decisions people make and I wonder what they would do in the same situation.
In the book Sarah’s Key (by Tatiana de Rosnay) and also the film adaptation, we are shown a glimpse of how French citizens acted when their Jewish neighbours were taken away. Those from present day asked with disgust, “why didn’t they do anything?” and Julia Jarmond, the journalist writing a piece about the Vel D’hiver roundup asked, “how do you know how you’d act?” or something similar.
The question springs to mind as I read The Book Thief. We are given a glimpse of the life of a German family who live in a town where Jewish people were removed. When his son covers himself in charcoal and professes he wants to be like a black athlete, his father presents him with some truths of the time. Truths which on the surface appear almost judgemental or racist, but realistically I wonder, what would you do in a similar situation?
Alex Steiner is a member of the Nazi party.
He does not hate Jews.
Secretly he’s relieved (to an extent) that the Jewish shop owners were put out of business as propaganda told him they would steal all of his customers.
That didn’t mean he wanted them gone completely.
He had to do whatever he could to support his family. If that meant being in the Nazi party, then that’s what he had to do.
Still something bothered him, but he didn’t want to think too strongly about it for fear of what might surface.
I ask you again, what would you do?
It’s all very well and good us claiming that being a member of the Nazi party was the worst thing immeasurable. But at the time, what was worse? Protecting your family by sacrificing your principles or risking yours and your family’s freedom?
I like to think that I would take the moral high ground, but in a world as dangerous as Nazi Germany, I’m not so sure I would.
As much as I loved this book so dearly, it also makes me feel a little sad because I know that it’s going to take me a long time to find a book as amazing as this one. It took three years to discover this after Sarah’s Key and before that, well, I’m not even sure which book came before that, but it was probably about six years before.
I’ll now start a book that doesn’t speak to me quite as well, because what other option do I have.
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
Have you ever read a book and realised that you’ve waited your whole life for something so utterly wonderful as the words on those pages?
I’m crying, which is making my cold worse and my head ache. I hate it and yet I love each tear as it strolls down my face because this is what fiction is all about.
I’ve very particular about fiction and this is why. I don’t mind the odd book with a carefree storyline of nothing of real worldly significance. But all in all, this is what I look for in a story. A book that can make me laugh and cry. A story that makes my heart swell in my chest with each and every chapter. Words which, when put together, make me feel like everything finally makes sense.
I cry for the story and I cry because the story is over.
And it was so perfect.
So utterly perfect that I’m not quite sure what else I have to say.
Only read on if you’ve read The Book Thief or don’t mind knowing how it ends.
The narrator is Death. And what an amazing narrator he is too. I assume he’s a he, probably because the author is male and somehow it’s a masculine voice I hear.
He ‘spoils’ the story before and it’s over and somehow, that’s okay…he makes it okay. It’s his story, well, it’s Liesel’s story told by him, so it’s okay.
There are few things in life that make my heart break so jaggedly and this book, quite frankly, is the epitome of my heart break.
Liesel loses every single person in her life when she’s just fourteen years old. She didn’t have them in her life for most of it, they didn’t get to see her grow up and that’s the most heartbreaking part of the whole story.
War time, Germany, a world which I love to read about and yet I’ve never really read a story from the point of view of the Nazis before. Not that it’s really the Nazis. But they’re almost forced into being on the side of the Nazis, which is something I rarely end up reading stories about.
I really don’t know what else to say, except to type up the piece I wrote on paper and have since used as a bookmark, from near the start of the book.
There are so many judgements made about decisions people make and I wonder what they would do in the same situation.
In the book Sarah’s Key (by Tatiana de Rosnay) and also the film adaptation, we are shown a glimpse of how French citizens acted when their Jewish neighbours were taken away. Those from present day asked with disgust, “why didn’t they do anything?” and Julia Jarmond, the journalist writing a piece about the Vel D’hiver roundup asked, “how do you know how you’d act?” or something similar.
The question springs to mind as I read The Book Thief. We are given a glimpse of the life of a German family who live in a town where Jewish people were removed. When his son covers himself in charcoal and professes he wants to be like a black athlete, his father presents him with some truths of the time. Truths which on the surface appear almost judgemental or racist, but realistically I wonder, what would you do in a similar situation?
Alex Steiner is a member of the Nazi party.
He does not hate Jews.
Secretly he’s relieved (to an extent) that the Jewish shop owners were put out of business as propaganda told him they would steal all of his customers.
That didn’t mean he wanted them gone completely.
He had to do whatever he could to support his family. If that meant being in the Nazi party, then that’s what he had to do.
Still something bothered him, but he didn’t want to think too strongly about it for fear of what might surface.
I ask you again, what would you do?
It’s all very well and good us claiming that being a member of the Nazi party was the worst thing immeasurable. But at the time, what was worse? Protecting your family by sacrificing your principles or risking yours and your family’s freedom?
I like to think that I would take the moral high ground, but in a world as dangerous as Nazi Germany, I’m not so sure I would.
As much as I loved this book so dearly, it also makes me feel a little sad because I know that it’s going to take me a long time to find a book as amazing as this one. It took three years to discover this after Sarah’s Key and before that, well, I’m not even sure which book came before that, but it was probably about six years before.
I’ll now start a book that doesn’t speak to me quite as well, because what other option do I have.