The Book Thief - The Good and the Bad

A stereotypical mistake that many make when thinking of Germany during the Second World War is that all Germans during the period were Nazis through choice, and that all German people supported Hitler and his judgments of the Jews. The Book Thief takes this belief and rips it to shreds, setting it alight and tossing it to the wind completely.

The book begins with an introduction from a surprisingly friendly personification of Death, whom it seems, has a heart after all. This small, three-page prologue gives you a feel for the characteristics of how Death writes, and his wry personality. The story then begins after a small list of what is included within the story:

"It's a small story, about:
a girl,
some words,
an accordionist,
some fanatical Germans,
a Jewish fist-fighter,
and quite a lot of thievery."

As with most books, The Book Thief is appropriately named for the events that it holds. Markus Zusak opens wide the lives of Germans living during the Second World War and what they saw with a regretfully beautiful description of their grey little lives on Himmel (Heaven) Street. The protagonist is nine-year-old Liesel, who after the death of her brother at the beginning of the book steals a book on grave-digging from a clumsy apprentice. Then through the duration of the war, as life on Himmel Street becomes progressively worse, her words become her saviour, stealing these books helps her and her family, friends and acquaintances battle themselves into deeper waters in Nazi Germany. Yes, there are coldhearted Nazis and the desperate Jews that they fought to destroy within, but there are also Nazi followers that aren't as hard of heart as we are taught to believe, and is one friend of Liesel and her foster family that has one of the largest impacts of them all upon the reader; Max Vandenburg. Max, the Jewish son of the Jewish German soldier that saved Liesel's foster father's life during the last war, Max the Jewish man that hid within her basement and painted a new story upon the pages of Mein Kampf to give Liesel a beautiful story which came to be because of her nine-year-old self.

Many of Zusak's characters are inspirational, from the little heroine Liesel herself, to her foster father Hans Hubermann and his perfectly selfless personality and beautiful accordion whose music would 'look Liesel in the face', Max Vandenburg - the Jew who lived in her basement and would ask for her to tell him of the weather whilst he wrote and drew beautiful stories of words and birds, Rudy Steiner - her best friend who wanted just one kiss from Liesel and worshipped the black athelete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin olympics named Jesse Owens and in some respects, death himself, as a non-human trying to understand the lives we lead before he takes us away from Earth forever.

The story ends abruptly, with a fore-warning at the beginning of Part 10, leaving the reader with a feeling of desperation for a different outcome, because as we all know, the Second World War was devastating, not only for the West, but also for Germany. And the book tells you this, Death and Liesel's story will tell you this within five hundred and fifty-four pages. It would be smart of you to read their tale because maybe then, Death will not be haunted by quite so many humans..