As a reader and historical-fiction fan, I have heard nothing
but praise for Markus Zusak’s The Book
Thief. So, when it came across the library counter last week, I could
hardly think of a reason to put off reading it.
Having read scores of books featuring the holocaust, both fiction and
non-fiction, I was prepared for a heart-wrenching read. What surprised me, however, was the sheer lyrical
beauty of the writing. With disarming originality, Liesel’s (the novel’s
protagonist and namesake) experiences in Nazi Germany are narrated for the
reader by the semi-omniscient Death, whose voice is alternately acerbic and achingly
poignant. Death takes up the thread of Liesel’s tale when, at age 10 in 1938, on a journey
with her mother and brother to foster placement in Molching, she witnesses the
sudden death of her six year-old brother.
Death, on hand to ferry his soul from his body, becomes distracted by
Liesel and her sudden, inexplicable theft of a grave digger’s handbook. The banalities and absurdities of Nazi-era Germany
are cleverly catalogued through the observations of the storyteller and his
young muse. Death gives us a backstage
pass to the war years as experienced by townspeople (a few in particular) in a
city on the outskirts of the Dachau concentration camp. Absolution is neither
implied nor expected as the novel examines the duality of its characters, each of
whom must wrestle with their own capacity for destruction and redemption. As the narrator so aptly puts it, “The human
heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to
be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I’m
always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their
beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both.”
