The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
Title: The Book Thief.
Author: Markus Zusak.
Genre: Fiction, literature, WWII, war lit, bildungsroman, romance, books on books.
Country: Australia.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2005.
Summary: Narrated by Death itself, this is a story about the ability of books to feed the soul. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist - books, aided by her best friend Rudy. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids, as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
My rating: 8.5/10.
My Review: This book is absolutely exceptional - I have never read anything quite like it. I read it in exactly one sitting, simply because I could not put it down from the very first sentence, and it reads like a melody. I was hooked with the idea of a novel being narrated by Death during WWII, but I was delighted to get something very different from what I expected, and it's probably the most remarkable thing about this book - the profound compassion, love, and empathy that is woven into every line. Death narrates without judgment, but with a slight hint of sadness that goes right to the heart. I also enjoyed that the book was told from the perspective of a regular German girl and family, as that is a view that doesn't often get a lot of coverage in Holocaust literature. It's almost not about the Holocaust as much as it is concurrent to it, which makes the details even more chilling. Of course, I absolutely loved the part books play in the novel - the love of reading, the difficulty of getting books, and the way the books help form the relationships between characters like the familiar comfort they bring to Liesel and Hans, the friendship they bring to Liesel and Rudy and Liesel and Max, and the comfort and courage they bring through Liesel to her neighbours during the bomb raids. In the end, this book is as uplifting as it is devastating, and it will haunt you, as is stated so poignantly in one of the most memorable lines of the novel, as humans haunt Death.
♥ * * * HERE IS A SMALL FACT * * *
You are going to die.
I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that’s only the A’s. Just don’t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.
* * * REACTION TO THE* * *
AFOREMENTIONED FACT
Does this worry you?
I urge you - don’t be afraid.
I’m nothing if not fair.
- Of course, an introduction.
A beginning.
Where are my manners?
I could introduce myself properly, but it’s not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.
At that moment, you will be lying there (I rarely find people standing up). You will be caked in your own body. There might be a discovery; a scream will dribble down the air. The only sound I’ll hear after that will be my own breathing, and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps.
The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?
♥ Next, her mother.
She woke her up with the same distraught shake.
If you can’t imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.
♥ He came in every night and sat with her. The first couple of times, he simply stayed - a stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered, “Shhh, I’m here, it’s all right.” After three weeks, he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness. The girl knew from the outset that Hans Hubermann would always appear midscream, and he would not leave.
* * * A DEFINITION NOT FOUND * * *
IN THE DICTIONARY
Not leaving, an act of trust and love,
often deciphered by children.
♥ The accordion’s scratched yet shiny black exterior came back and forth as his arms squeezed the dusty bellows, making it suck in the air and throw it back out. In the kitchen on those mornings, Papa made the accordion live. I guess it makes sense, if you really think about it.
How do you tell if something’s alive?
You check for breathing.
♥ She never neglected to spuck on the door of number thirty-three and say, “Schweine! each time she walked past. One thing I’ve noticed about the Germans:
They seem very fond of pigs.
♥ One sat painfully now, among the falling chunks of rain, and the other stood next to her, waiting.
“Why did he have to die?” she asked, but still, Ruby did nothing; he said nothing.
When finally she finished and stood herself up, he put his arm around her, best-buddy style, and they walked on. There was no request for a kiss. Nothing like that. You can love Rudy for that, if you like.
Just don’t kick me in the eggs.
That’s what he was thinking, but he didn’t tell Liesel that. It was nearly four years later that he offered that information.
♥ It’s no tune to be half watching, turning around, or checking the stove - because when the book thief stole her second book, not only were there many factors involved in her hunger to do so, but the act of stealing it triggered the crux of what was to come. It would provide her with a venue for continued book thievery. It would inspire Hans Hubermann to come up with a plan to help the Jewish fist fighter. And it would show me, once again, that opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.
♥ In a way, it was destiny.
You see, people may tell you that Nazi Germany was built on anti-Semitism, a somewhat overzealous leader, and a nation of hate-fed bigots, but it would all have come to nothing had the Germans not loved one particular activity:
To burn.
The Germans loved to burn things. Shops, synagogues, Rechstags, houses, personal items, slain people, and of course, books. They enjoyed a good book-burning all right - which gave people who were partial to books the opportunity to get their hands on certain publications they otherwise wouldn’t have. One person who was that was inclined, as we know, was a thin-boned girl named Liesel Meminger. She may have waited 463 days, but it was worth it. At the end of an afternoon that had contained much excitement, much beautiful evil, one blood-soaked ankle, and a slap from a trusted hand, Liesel Meminger attained her second success story. The Shoulder Shrug.
♥ “Looks like,” Papa suggested, “I don’t need to trade more cigarettes, do I? Not when you’re stealing these things as fast as I can buy them.”
Liesel, by comparison, did not speak. Perhaps it was her first realization that criminality spoke best for itself. Irrefutable.
♥ She even allowed herself a laugh. Eleven-year-old paranoia was powerful. Eleven-year-old relief was euphoric.
♥ Steadily, the room shrank, till the book thief could touch the shelves within a few small steps. She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book. It sounded like an instrument, or the notes of running feet. She used both hands. She raced them. One shelf against the other. And she laughed. Her voice was sprawled out, high in her throat, and when she eventually stopped and stood in the middle of the room, she spent many minutes looking from the shelves to her fingers and back again.
How many books had she touched?
How many books had she felt?
She walked over and did it again, this time much slower, with her hand facing forward, allowing the dough of her palm to feel the small hurdle of each book. It felt like magic, like beauty, as bright lines of light shone down from a chandelier. Several times, she almost pulled a title from its place but didn’t dare disturb them. They were too perfect.
♥ “Max,” it whispered. “Max, wake up.”
His eyes did not do anything that shock normally describes. No snapping, no slapping, no jolt. Those things happen when you wake from a bad dream, not when you wake into one.
♥ When Liesel made it to the top of Himmel Street, she looked back just in time to see him standing in front of the nearest makeshift goals. He was waving.
“Saukerl,” she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneously calling her a Saumensch. I think that’s as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get.
♥ In the army, he didn’t stick out at either end. He ran in the middle, climbed in the middle, and he could shoot straight enough so as not to affront his superiors. Nor did he excel enough to be the one first chosen to run straight at me.
* * * A SMALL BUT NOTEWORTHY NOTE * * *
I’ve seen so many young men
over the years who think they’re
running at other young men.
They are not.
They’re running at me.
♥ He had what he called just a small ration of tools:
A painted book.
A handful of pencils.
A mindful of thoughts.
Like a simple puzzle, he put them together.
♥ * * * THE FROZEN MOTIVES * * *
OF RUDY STEINER
1. After months of failure, this moment was
his only chance to revel in some victory.
2.Such a position of selflessness was a good place to ask Liesel for the usual fare.
How could she possible turn him down?
“How about a kiss, Saumensch?”
He stood waist-deep in the water for a few moments longer before climbing out and handing her the book. His pants clung to him, and he did not stop walking. In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief’s kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them.
♥ In all honesty (and I know I’m complaining excessively now), I was still getting over Stalin, in Russia. The so-called second revolution - the murder of his own people.
Then came Hitler.
They say that war is death’s best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thing, incessantly: “Get it done, get it done.” So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.
♥ “Alles gut, Saumensch? The injury, I mean.”
It was June. It was Germany.
Things were on the verge of decay.
Liesel was unaware of this. For her, the Jew in her basement had not been revealed. Her foster parents were not taken away, and she herself had contributed greatly to both of these accomplishments.
“Everything’s good,” she said, and she was not talking about a soccer injury of any description.
She was fine.
♥ They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.
♥ Liesel calculated that there were four more reading sessions like that with Frau Holtzapfel before the Jews were marched through Molching.
They were going to Dachau, to concentrate.
That makes two weeks, she would later write in the basement. Two weeks to change the world, and fourteen days to ruin it.
♥ Now more than ever, 33 Himmel Street was a place of silence, and it did not go unnoticed that the Duden Dictionary was completely and utterly mistaken, especially with its related words.
Silence was not quiet or calm, and it was not peace.
♥ For some reason, dying men always ask questions they know the answer to. Perhaps it’s so they can die being right.
♥ It’s probably fair to say that in all the years of Hitler’s reign, no person was able to serve the Führer as loyally as me. A human doesn’t have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.
♥ “You told him about me?”
At first, Liesel could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him? It’s likely. Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn’t matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. Her skin was empty for it, waiting.
Years ago, when they’d raced on a muddy field, Rudy was a hastily assembled set of bones, with a jagged, rocky smile. In the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears. He was a triple Hitler Youth athletic champion. He was her best friend. And he was a month from his death.
“Of course I told him about you,” Liesel said.
She was saying goodbye and she didn’t even know it.
♥ She had seen her brother die with one eye open, one still in a dream. She had said goodbye to her mother and imagined her lonely wait for a train back home to oblivion. A woman of wire had laid herself down, her scream traveling the street, till it fell sideways like a rolling coin starved of momentum. A young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow. She had watched a bomber pilot die in a metal case. She had seen a Jewish man who had given her the most beautiful pages of her life marched to a concentration camp. And at the center of all of it, she was the Führer shouting his words and passing them around.
Those images were the world, and it stewed in her as she sat with the lovely books and their manicured titles. It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words.
You bastards, she thought.
You lovely bastards.
Don’t make me happy. Please, don’t fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don’t want to hope for anything anymore. I don’t want to pray that Max is alive and safe. Or Alex Steiner.
Because the world does not deserve them.
♥ I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn’t already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.
None of those things, however, came out of my mouth.
All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you.
* * * A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR * * *
I am haunted by humans.