The Book Thief-Review by Pat

The book is narrated by Death who describes all of the main characters thoughts and emotions as well as his own. Death’s perspective injects humor at times but the overall tone is sadness.  The writing style of the book was written with an intimate, conversational style observing the relationships between the main characters and the conflicts they face during World War II.  Death flashes forward to the future to reveal some of the characters fates, which some of us were a little conflicted about if we wanted to know this foreshadowing of what was going to happen.  The booked flowed well with the articulate, descriptive observations of the surrounds and characters.  

The book follows the events during World War II with Liesel as the main character and the challenges she faces with the hardship of war-time Germany and hiding Max in their home.  There are a number of sub plots in the book and we all really liked certain characters like Hans, Rosa (she grew on us), Rudy (I think we all would have kissed him) and Max.  One of the underlying themes in the book was the power of words and how they were used by different characters to influence, direct and affect people (Max, Hitler and Liesel through the book she wrote).  I think we all agreed we would have rather have had a happier ending as most of the major characters were killed.  There were a lot of crucial scenes in the book that touched us and we discussed how difficult it must be to live in a constant, high stress environment like what occurred during this time period.  

In summary, we all seemed to enjoy the book, the writing style and characters.  Seven of us rated the book with an average rating of 3.65.   

About the Author: Markus Frank Zusak was born in 1975 and is an Australian writer. He is best known for The Book Thief and I Am The Messenger, two novels for young adults which have been international bestsellers. The Book Thief was published in 2005 and has been translated into more than 30 languages. Beside winning awards in Australia and overseas, The Book Thief has held the number one position at Amazon.com and on the New York Times bestseller list, as well as in Brazil, Ireland and Taiwan. It has been among the top five best sellers in the UK, Spain, Israel and South Korea, and is still set to be released in many other territories.