THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak was chosen by my book group as their April selection.
When I learned it was a YA book, I groaned.
When I learned it was about the Second World War in Germany, I groaned again.
Then I found out it was about a ten-year old girl orphaned and sent to live with a foster family. Jeez, I thought. Can't we ever read a happy book?
THE BOOK THIEF was not a happy book. But it was a highly original book-much more so than most adult novels I read. I don't even understand why someone classified it as YA. Is every book with a YA hero classified as YA? This is a book teachers might choose for teens, but I can't imagine them choosing it for themselves.
The narrator in THE BOOK THIEF is Death and he tells the story from the standpoint of someone overwhelmed with his mission during the war. Death has his hands full.
But THE BOOK THIEF is even more the story of a young girl who loses her family and is sent to live with a foster family in a small German town. She can't read at first but values books greatly and collects them in whatever way she can. Her foster father reads to her every night from the improbable books she finds or steals. The family is kind, both to her and to a Jewish man fleeing the Nazis who is hiding in their basement.
This book certainly humanizes the German people. We watch them starve, freeze and die. Certainly its portrait of Nazis is acute. But with THE READER and this book, the trend is now to understand the Germans were victims of Hitler and fascism too. Maybe it is time to think about this.
It's really hard to do that though, knowing the smell of gassed bodies was mere miles away. Still, THE BOOK THIEF is a book worth reading.
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16 comments:
Hi Patti! I got you added. Thanks! The Book Thief is definitely on my TBR pile. My 2nd child loved it. There's so much cross-over between YA and adult these days, isn't there? Love that!
Patti,
Was this book made into a movie? I recognize the title. Like you, I tend to get tired of sad WWII stories. However, I never tire of learning about the triumphs of the human spirit even in times of struggle and even, at times, when the triumph is only in the next life. I have never thought of Death as being overwhelmed. For events like WWII where, say, on D-Day, thousands died, I always picture the angels opening the gates of heaven and letting in all the brave men who just laid down their lives.
It has taken a long time for the world to start to think about the German people who suffered during the WW II. I'm American. I grew up thinking about how horrific the war was. How the Germans had caused it. Then, as a young adult, I lived there for six years. I still didn't see the other side, the German everyday Joe side, of the war while living in Germany. It wasn't until I was about to leave Germany that I got a glimpse from my in-laws. They were telling stories about being shot at by allied bomber pilots as they were walking home from school. My whole perception of the war shifted. Children. There were children in Germany during the war. I began to see that there were so many more victims of that war. When I read Zusak's book, I got a glimpse at what it must have been like for children to live through a war they neither started nor could stop. There are no winners in war, only victims, on both sides. Thanks for reviewing The Book Thief. Thanks for putting that out there.
My wife's book club is reading THE BOOK THIEF next month. I printed out your comments and gave them to her. THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN is their current book for May.
If you don't learn some important truths about how bleak life is, we'll try it. This month we're reading Persepolis.
I doubt there's a movie yet. I think THE READER was especially powerful in holding this up to light.
I didn't even realize that this book was classified as YA! I just started it yesterday, in fact. I've heard nothing but raves . . .
That does sound like a tough read. But it also sounds very compelling. Thanks for the review!
The Book Thief sounds like a book worth reading, however grim, since it makes the reader think about life and death and humanity. And yes, I think any book with a teen protagonist is classified as YA. I don't think the intent is to say this is only for teens, but rather that it's appropriate or has special appeal to teens. Though some of the Manga, I've decided, is only for kids. ;)
sounds like an excellent read! If you have time, stop by to read my book review thanks :P
Loved THE BOOK THIEF. :)
In re: Germans as humans...well, there was SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, and Algis Budrys, Vonnegut's slightly younger contemporary, who as a child in Nazi Germany was permanently freaked by how the Germans around him were moved to an incontinent frenzy by the sight of Hitler, and mentioned this in several memoir-essays and interviews. Falling somewhere in between would be the film THE NASTY GIRL.
Yes, fiction about youth tends to be picked up by youth even if the librarians and such don't push it on them. Salinger, Twain, like that.
My son at 13 loved this book but my daughter found it too scary at 10. It looked interesting enough to make me want to revisit it on my own sometime.
I guess I read Anne Frank around 10 or 12 and I was pretty scared. In a way this is scarier because of the use of Death. Good readers, you have there, Sarah. Not an easy book for even YAs.
One of my book clubs read this one, too. I missed the meeting (and the book). And now that I've read your review . . . I'm still OK with that. I have to sort of be forced to read this type of book, though afterward I'm often glad I did.
(I also have to be forced to read the sort of book I reviewed for this month's review club, though for VERY different reasons.)
There is something that makes me not want to read books I didn't choose myself--although I am glad to share a community with the other members. It's complicated
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