Review - The Book Thief
Apr. 4th, 2008 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wilderthanI just finished reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I loved it a lot -- steamed through it despite sleepovers and watching movies and episodes of Due South. I finished it about hour ago, actually. The hour's delay in posting my thoughts was due to me letting it sink in, and also changing my personal LJ's layout a bit to quote it.
It's an interesting idea for a book. A story told by Death in the years of World War Two. It jumps about -- you know well before the end what happens at the end -- but, for me at least, that wasn't much of a deterrant. But then, I'm the one who often googles a plot summary just to see what direction a story is going in.
Since I posted recently about beginnings, let me tell you a little story. Once upon a Thursday morning, two books arrived for a girl sometimes known as Eden. She leaned down to turn her computer on, and opened The Book Thief to have a quick look. Fifty pages later, she surfaced. Her slow computer was sitting with an patient look about the monitor, waiting for her to get on with her morning routine. Come on, open Firefox already you silly thing, I haven't got all day. And geez, you complain about me being slow?
Anyway. The story meanders about casually, like a conversation that needs to get somewhere, but doesn't particularly have to get there fast, and somehow manages to get all the relevant details in when you need them, and also to make you care about the characters and the story, keeping you turning the pages. It's not that you're being manipulated into keeping going -- in fact, when you know how it's going to end, there's really no chance of a mystery being the thing that keeps you hooked.
The characters are, perhaps, a little stereotyped. The tomboyish girl and her best friend. The kindly foster father and the bellowing foster mother with a big heart and a gruff manner. A family sheltering a Jew.
But the book still makes you care about them.
I loved the way it was written too, especially in some places -- the way sounds or feelings are described as colours, and ways of describing things that I wouldn't normally think of: eyes like silver, lips like cardboard...
I can understand why some people don't like the book as much. But, if you haven't tried it -- looking at amazon reviews (both US and UK!), the chances are high that you're going to love it. No harm in trying, right?
"I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope that I have made them right."
It's an interesting idea for a book. A story told by Death in the years of World War Two. It jumps about -- you know well before the end what happens at the end -- but, for me at least, that wasn't much of a deterrant. But then, I'm the one who often googles a plot summary just to see what direction a story is going in.
Since I posted recently about beginnings, let me tell you a little story. Once upon a Thursday morning, two books arrived for a girl sometimes known as Eden. She leaned down to turn her computer on, and opened The Book Thief to have a quick look. Fifty pages later, she surfaced. Her slow computer was sitting with an patient look about the monitor, waiting for her to get on with her morning routine. Come on, open Firefox already you silly thing, I haven't got all day. And geez, you complain about me being slow?
Anyway. The story meanders about casually, like a conversation that needs to get somewhere, but doesn't particularly have to get there fast, and somehow manages to get all the relevant details in when you need them, and also to make you care about the characters and the story, keeping you turning the pages. It's not that you're being manipulated into keeping going -- in fact, when you know how it's going to end, there's really no chance of a mystery being the thing that keeps you hooked.
The characters are, perhaps, a little stereotyped. The tomboyish girl and her best friend. The kindly foster father and the bellowing foster mother with a big heart and a gruff manner. A family sheltering a Jew.
But the book still makes you care about them.
I loved the way it was written too, especially in some places -- the way sounds or feelings are described as colours, and ways of describing things that I wouldn't normally think of: eyes like silver, lips like cardboard...
I can understand why some people don't like the book as much. But, if you haven't tried it -- looking at amazon reviews (both US and UK!), the chances are high that you're going to love it. No harm in trying, right?
"I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope that I have made them right."
