Book Review: ‘The Book Thief’
“One of the most highly anticipated young-adult books in years,” Wall Street Journal wrote as an endorsement for the book The Book Thief by Mark Zusak. And since The Book Thief was published in 2005, it has won several awards for its “elegant, philosophical and moving” traits (Kirkus Review). The book has sold more than 16 million copies and has also been adapted into a 2-hour 11-minute movie rating 4.6 stars on Google reviews.
Considering the length of the book, 370 pages, the movie isn’t that long. Actually, the movie timing is terrific if you want to avoid reading the book because, despite so many wonderful reviews about this beloved book, I can’t say I love it—in fact, I abhor it; it’s one of the most meaningless historical fiction books I have read.
For the third unit in G9’s English Language & Literature class, we were given novels to choose to analyze. I chose To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and cannot be more glad I did not select The Book Thief since it had been my initial choice. I hadn’t read it before during that time, actually. Still, I had a copy gathering dust on my bookshelf, which I remembered after seeing the title among the novel choices. With the white cover striking against my other dark-covered spines, I suddenly thought to try it—after all, I did love historical fiction books, especially if it was about World War II.
When I read the first chapter at night, with my nightstand glowing brightly, I thought maybe my perception had changed; when I was younger, I attempted The Book Thief but couldn’t pass the first chapter—the story didn’t seem at all captivating. To my disappointment, I had to push myself to the second chapter, thinking it’ll get better. And so I moved to the third chapter, then the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, each time, pushing myself to get to the climax because then, it has to be good, right? Ha, even after the end of the book, I still didn’t find anything noteworthy. I still could not resonate with Liesel, the German protagonist, who steals books… for some apparent rebellious reason. She does love books, but it seems unrealistic that a nine-year-old girl would like books so much to risk getting shot if caught. Anyways, that wasn’t the primary reason I found the book to be like reading an instruction manual; it was actually the ending, which I thought to be rushed and ridiculous, and the lack of a plot of any kind.
Note: if you haven’t read the book and want to try it, I would recommend it—not because there’s anything worth reading about, in my opinion, but because it’s considered a classic historical fiction book and many people do like it. In whatever way, please don’t continue this review if you don’t want spoilers—I’m about to rant about the ending.
After all the turns and turns and turns of seeing Liesel get into trouble, the book ends with Liesel’s adoptive parents dying, her friend Rudy dead (I don’t even know why this character was included in the story—it seems to me he made no actual contributions to the plot, theme, or anything), and Himmel Street (where Liesel lived) being bombed to nothing. And, ta-da, Liesel survived! Somehow, during the bombing of her entire town, she was in her basement asleep after writing her book (called The Book Thief, by the way, so supposedly, this whole book is by her). And then Liesel’s in utter shock when she wakes, and then kisses the inanimate Rudy goodbye, screams for her adoptive parents, especially her adoptive father (pity to see Hans die; he was actually a decent character, helping Max, a Jewish boy, and a suitable fatherly character), and then finally being adopted by the mayor and his wife who also survives… somehow. All this information is jammed into a chapter before Zusak gives the epilogue, where it says Liesel had a happy life, blah, blah, blah, and then was carried away by Death.
Moving backward from this book, the book is narrated by Death, which makes the narration unique and would have made the book nice if not for Death’s choice to tell the story of Liesel, who’s ‘courageous.’ Courage, I suppose, but I’d think of it more to be recklessness; in addition to the Jewish genocide, the Nazis were ruthless with their own people who were caught disobeying their regiments. Alright, and even if Liesel was more courageous than reckless, her story never really has any push. There’s no straightforward plot. She just steals books, blackmails the mayor’s wife (Heaven knows why the mayor couple adopted her) after she stops employing Liesel’s mother to wash her clothes, and runs around with Rudy stealing stuff. The climax may have been the bombing of Himmel Street, or perhaps when Max was leaving Liesel’s house, but personally, I think those events seem irrelevant to Liesel; she’s not the one in danger of being sent to a concentration camp, she didn’t die from the bombing—she doesn’t have character development or anything.
All in all, I found The Book Thief to be incredibly dull and empty, with Liesel being an uninteresting protagonist, the supporting characters being distracting, and nothing really happening to anything until the sudden end of the story through the deaths of almost every ‘significant’ character.
One out of five stars.
