Book Review | The Book Thief

The Book Thief

By Markus Zusak

Penguin  |  2018  |  560 pages

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Book Thief follows Liesel; a nine year old girl living in Munich, Germany with her foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann after losing her own family. It is 1939 in Nazi Germany and the novel is narrated and offered via the perspective of Death. 

Soon enough, Liesel takes to stealing books that she finds around Himmel Street and so begins her love affair with reading and words, and soon, she is stealing from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library… wherever there are books to be found.

However, these are dangerous times and when Liesel’s foster family begins hiding a Jew in their basement, nothing will ever be the same. 

The Book Thief has been on my TBR list for years now and I have constantly reminded myself of its existence before quickly forgetting about it and saying, “I’ll read it another time.”

But, I finally made the time for it and immersed myself in the world of Himmel Street and reading Liesel’s antics, both humorous and tragic at different moments within the book. This is not exactly a short book either so I bit the bullet and just started it and I am so glad I finally did.

I am usually someone who forces myself to read a book within a day because with a lot of books, I am neither gripped nor intrigued enough to stagger my reading over several days. But, that was not an issue this time around as I spent 8 days sporadically reading this and not once did it feel like a chore or that I had to push through until the end. It was one of those books that I was excited to get home to after work and pick it straight back up.

I am vividly aware of how loved and praised this title is; I have never really seen any review that scores this low on their reading lists and so I was excited going into this. This title is one that has always consistently come across my feeds and all that follows are positive reviews.

I love history and I love learning more about the world wars, especially as I have aged. As a teenager, I could care less about history but since being in my 20’s, it is definitely a subject that I now have a greater appreciation for. In particular, I tend to lean towards educating myself regularly on the holocaust and all that was allowed to happen during the period of Nazi Germany as well as the monstrous things that Hitler was allowed and encouraged to do. 

I have had the privilege of visiting Auschwitz and witnessing first hand the spaces and environments that Jewish victims would have faced during that horrendous time. I couldn’t help but envision the camp whenever Jews were marched through Himmel Street or whenever Max was forced to remain in the basement to avoid such a fate. 

There were no negatives in this book; I find novels of this kind of nature are very difficult to criticise because when books with themes of the Holocaust are written well, they treat the subject with the respect and honour that it deserves and so how could I possibly find flaws?

So instead, I am going to touch on the things that I really appreciated about this masterpiece of a book. 

The whole aspect of the story being told by Death was so interesting and profound. The subtleties of phrasing throughout the book were fascinating. The references to returning to places more than once and how he had met Liesel several times, not for her own death but due to the fact that she was misfortunate enough to be in the presence of several souls that Death collects in the story’s outlined timeframe.

He talks about colours and the associations they have to the events going on throughout the book. This in itself creates a vivid and surreal level of imagery to really do justice to the horrors of the war and the impact it had upon real people having to endure the bombings and destruction. The scene in the forefront of my mind is towards the end. I won’t spoil anything in my review but the last quarter of the book had me on floods of tears; I had palpitations as I read the sentences in the silence of my bedroom, dreading the inevitable that was to be confirmed a few pages after.

The description and structure of the narrative was so ethereal and incredibly accurate. The way the aftermath of the last bombing was explained was earth shattering and my heart broke as I read through. There were a good few, solid gut punches that had me ugly crying in the wee hours of the night. 

Despite being heavily prepared in numerous chapters for what was coming, I still found myself speechless after the final bombing because of just how much Liesel lost from it. I suppose I naively thought there would be some miracle that stopped the tragedies from happening but then I had to remind myself that this story takes place during WWII and it was an unforgiving time that proved fates are fair in the lives that are left in ruins; the universe doesn’t take sides and hold favourites. In the war, it didn’t matter how good or bad of a person you were; there was equality in devastation during the war.

I really appreciated the non linear path; the back and forth between the years as I felt it added more depth, rather than a straight A to B format that a lot of novels go with. And as mentioned, there was the sense of constant foreboding due to the subtle hints and wording at the end of chapters to really emphasize that things were going to go sour. The pace was maybe slower than I like but still, it didn’t feel like the plot was dragging or anything like that and to be honest, I feel the ending would not have had the same emotional effect had it been rushed.

The characters were lovable and individualised. I feel the actions and descriptions of certain characters were well done to the point, I disliked who I was meant to dislike and I loved who I was meant to love. Characters like the mayor’s wife, I was a bit grey on. For some reason, I expected her to be heinous and be backstabbing when the time came but I was pleasantly surprised by her.

In conclusion, this book is a solid 5 stars for me. I feel like the underlying theme and historical context is a tricky one to write correctly without being distasteful but I feel like Markus Zusak does it beautifully. He has another novel, “Bridge of Clay” that I would like to read one day as I feel this one was so good, it would be nice to do some further reading.

This book was so moving and so well written and played out, I could definitely see myself reading it again and I’d be interested in watching a movie adaptation if there is one out there. I have already recommended it to my sister in particular who reads so many books about the war and novels by Heather Morris, that I think she’d love this.

This book was gripping and so interesting that I struggled to put it down a lot of the days and that, my friends, is how I know I loved a book through and through.

What do you think of The Book Thief?