Time to be a little candid. We’re all readers here, right? We all love books, we all have stayed up much too late one night or another, because we only had a hundred pages left and we couldn’t just give up.
And I would hazard a guess that we all have that one book. The book that left us stunned and shell-shocked and completely destroyed. The book we cried over and loved and read again, and again, and again. The book we have no trouble going up to a stranger for and saying, “This book broke my heart and soul, please, go read it! It will change the way you think.”
The Book Thief was that book for me.
To be perfectly honest, I did not want to read this book. I saw it many times at thrift stores, in book reviews, in Barnes and Noble, just about everywhere. And I shunned it. Who wants to read a book narrated by Death?
Right?
Wrong.
This book was incredible. The writing was unique and brilliantly thought out, the storyline was engaging and so interesting, and the characters were so vivid that it took my breath away. They were people. Real people. People you would meet in the supermarket, or on the bus, or in a crowded shopping mall. They were real, they were honest, and they broke my poor heart.
The story—narrated by Death, of course—follows Liesal Meminger. Or, the Book Thief. She is a foster child in Nazi Germany, the daughter of a Communist who was taken away by Der Führer. Little Liesal was left behind, and given to another family to raise. A more suitable family.
The Hubbermans.
Death encounters the Book Thief three times. And each time, he is distracted in his work by her. By her strength, her grief, her love. Her story captivated him, and it will captivate you just as strongly, I can promise you that. Her quest for books, her friendship with the boy next door, the secret hiding in her basement that she doesn’t dare share with anyone, for fear of being taken away like her mother, they all combine to create a story that is not like any other I have ever read.
I still pick up The Book Thief every so often, just to read a few pages, to remind myself how much I loved this book. How real it was. How earth shattering. WWII was one of the most horrendous chapters in world history, and yet, The Book Thief reminds me that—although it isn’t a true story—there were people who were lights among the darkness. People who cared, people who loved. I think it’s always important to remember that, in any story.
Even ours.
***A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR***
I am haunted by humans.
Ramblings of an Obsessive Bookworm 