 Found Poem-The Book Thief |
The next book you read should be Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. I finished it two nights ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. The book’s been in my peripheral vision for a couple of years; I picked it up a couple of times and thought about reading it, but at any given time there are about a dozen books that I’m thinking about reading, so I never got around to it. A friend recently asked me about it ,and that brought it back to my attention and I finally settled down with great anticipation to read it.
I had high expectations, and The Book Thief blew them out of the water.
The story follows a young German girl named Liesel growing up in a suburb of Munich at the height of Hitler’s regime. In January 1939, when she is nine years old, she is given over to foster parents when, for mysterious reasons, her mother can no longer care for her. She grows up with her new foster parents in a silently anti-Nazi household, publicly participating in the Hitler Youth program and attending book-burning gatherings while her parents are secretly harboring a Jewish man in the basement. Her adopted father is the epitome of kindness and charity, teaching the illiterate Liesel how to read and write and igniting a passion for books. I can’t discuss the plot too much more without ruining it, but it’s about growing up in a scary and uncertain time, and the power of books to comfort and empower. But this is no ordinary World War II story – it’s a World War II story narrated by Death. And I can say with no qualms whatsoever that Death is the BEST. NARRATOR. EVER. He (it?) takes notice of Liesel for the first time when he comes for her little brother. (“She caught me out, no doubt about it. It was exactly when I knelt down and extracted his soul, holding it limply in my swollen arms. He warmed up soon after, but when I picked him up originally, the boy’s spirit was soft and cold, like ice cream. He started melting in my arms. Then warming up completely. Healing.”) He encounters Liesel two more times in her life as he comes to collect peoples’ souls at key moments, and he is taken with her and her story. As a non-human, Death is baffled by the things that people do, and he makes some interesting observations about human behavior. He’s not quite omnipotent, but he has a wider frame of reference than the average person does; his method of storytelling isn’t linear. As the story progresses in a mostly chronological fashion, we get periodic glimpses into the future that puts the events into larger context so we understand their significance. There are characters in the story whose deaths are described almost immediately upon their arrival on the scene…this being a WWII story, you can imagine that there’s quite a bit of death. Almost every character’s demise is mentioned long before it actually happens, and the writing here is so brilliant that even though you know far ahead of time that someone is going to die, it doesn’t soften the blow when they finally do. This is the most beautiful and gut-wrenching book I have ever read. I sobbed. When was the last time a book made you actually shed tears? I sat in my bed on Friday night and cried like I haven’t cried in ages. The last few chapters have the most exquisitely gorgeous and heartbreaking passages I’ve ever read in any book, and I’ve read a whole lot of books. You might be wondering why in the hell anyone would want to read a book that makes you cry like a baby, but just trust me, you do. It’s so sad, but so strangely beautiful in its sadness. And it isn’t sad just for the sake of pushing your buttons. There’s a point to it all….or rather, it raises a question and that question is the point: How can human beings be so awful and so beautiful at the same time? “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 so brilliant.” World War II is the perfect setting for a story about this dichotomy, because while Liesel is growing up in a country where indescribable cruelty is taking place and hatred is stomping around in jackboots, she and the people in her life are continuously doing small but beautiful things. Her life is hard, but it is shot through with kindness and loveliness and strength. How can we be so brutal and so kind? So evil and so divine? I don’t think there is a definitive answer to that question, but the question itself is enough to marvel at.
The Book Thief is getting a place of honor among the best books I’ve ever read. I don’t think I’ve ever been so moved and haunted by a book since ''night''. This one is going to stay with me forever. I wish someone had sat me down three years ago and told me I have to read this book, so now I’m doing that for you.
