General info: Young adult novel, published in 2005
Storytelling: 5.5 – Having been a German major and someone who lived in Europe for a year, I’ve learned a fair bit about World War II and the Holocaust, and I always appreciate a story that attempts to uncover an authentic perspective from that time. It infuriates me when people assume that all Germans in the 30’s and 40’s were blood-thirsty Nazis who were bent on murdering and conquering everyone. Sure, there were definitely many bad apples, but for the most part I think Germany had been cruelly kicked to the curb after WWI, wasn’t really thinking clearly, got carried away listening to a guy with an atrocious mustache, and woke up one morning in a really horrific situation. Anyway, I digress, but this is main thing I appreciated about Zusak’s book here: the attempt at authenticity.
Zusak’s tale is told from the perspective of Death, which I thought was creatively inspired and unique. He tells the story of Leisel, a pre-teen living on the outskirts of Munich during the war. She, along with most of the members of her community, are the “good Germans”, and he weaves a delightful but heart-breaking tale about the little heroine who learns how to read at the age of ten and starts stealing books because she loves words and reading. This book was in many ways not your traditional young-adult novel, and I enjoyed how Zusak did not gloss over the gory details. For example, the book starts with Leisel’s little brother dying en route to Munich where their mother is handing her children over to foster parents because she is likely to be taken away for her pro-Communist leanings. Leisel never sees her real mother again, and her new foster mother routinely beats her and insults her. She spends the next four years poor and hungry, often confused and scared, until the book weirdly climaxes with the bombing of her neighborhood and the death of most everyone she knows, including her foster parents. However, those are just the sad parts, and there was a great deal of joy and triumph mixed in as well (namely regarding her relationship with her loving and upstanding foster father) and the story ends with Leisel being taken in by the town major and being reunited with the Jewish man her foster family hides in their basement for a few years. However…
I had a lot of issues with the story, even though I ultimately thought it was a good one. Firstly, the book thief nonsense started to not make much sense to me, especially because Zusak attempted to make it about her love for words. Leisel does steal a few books (one from a Nazi burning rally, a few more from the major’s library) but the attempt to make it the centralized theme of the book seemed really weak and contrived. Death goes on and on and on about how she’s about to steal a book because she just loves words so much, but I feel like the character Zusak actually creates with Leisel is just another grubby kid who’d rather go play soccer in the mud or steal apples from an orchard than sit inside reading. It doesn’t line up somewhere.
Also, Zusak’s blunt-force foreshadowing really got on my nerves. Halfway through the book, you realize that Leisel’s parents and closest friends are all going to die (Death talks about when he gets to “meet” them) but I don’t feel like it added to the suspense or made the creative experience richer. And duh, if all the people on a city block suddenly die, and they’re not Jewish, it will be because of a bombing raid. I think I could have deduced that one even without the German major.
Finally, some of the story’s details didn’t really line up historically. During the war, if there was even the faintest suspicion that you sympathized with Jews, the Nazis would have made your life a living hell and strip searched your house multiple times. In this story, they Nazis mostly just ignore Hans (Leisel’s foster father) until he really pisses them off by offering a piece of bread to a Jewish prisoner. Only then does he get sent off to do search and rescue missions in Stuttgart. Yea right. They would have sent him barefoot to Stalingrad or thrown him in jail. They also would not have searched his house one measly time to see if it would be an adequate bomb shelter and not noticed the Jewish man hiding under the stairs. COME ON. I would understand if Zusak was doing this to soften it a little bit to make it appropriate for younger readers, but a few chapters later everyone dies in a pile of rubble. I’m not buying it.
Writing: 7 – I don’t really have much to say about Zusak’s writing, aside from the fact I felt it was perfectly adequate and at times even clever. Writing from Death’s perspective was a stroke of genius, I think, and was what made this book unique when compared to other similar works. (Now that we’re multiple generations past WWII, I feel like more and more books are coming out about the time period because it’s a bit safer and less painful to talk about.) Death offered his perspective and his activities occasionally, but he didn’t overwhelm the reader with some weird macabre, malevolent vibe. I quite enjoyed this Death character and his frequent use of synesthesia to describe his surroundings. He seemed to be a romantic, considerate guy who was just tired of doing his job and running around Europe collecting so many souls so quickly.
Zusak can write well, and his writing is undoubtedly super flowery and poetic, which I’m always a fan of, but it wasn’t as rich or as compelling as I would have liked. Again, this might just be the young adult thing, seeing as I can’t see your average 15-year-old appreciating something too deep. And although Zusak’s story matter was darker, you can tell he’s an author with a sense of humor and an awareness of children. I can understand how this book would appeal greatly to your average reader, but to me it was nothing mind-blowing or life-changing, as all the reviews told me it would be. It was simply a nice story by a good author.
Characters: 5 – First and foremost, this story did not make me cry. And I am a fan of a good cry, and I am a huge fan of kids. It was tragic, and it was meant to be heart-wrenching, but at most all I could really manage was a good frown. For this, I blame Zusak’s characters, and I’ll elucidate with some analysis.
Leisel is your average, perfectly uninteresting 10-year-old as the book starts, and I never really found myself opening up to her as the pages went by. As a child I was the biggest book lover/reader on the market, which is what Zusak was trying to make Leisel out to be, but I never found myself identifying with her. She also, in many ways, seemed to act a little too mature for her age. For example, she’s perfectly fine eating the same thing every night for dinner when rations get limited (I suppose this is because other friends of hers have nothing to eat at all…but still), and her witty one-liners and general demeanor when dealing with older kids smacks of a confidence that is evidenced nowhere else in the book. Something about Leisel just felt slightly off.
Her foster parents, Hans and Rosa, are equally as bland. Hans is, from the get-go, described to be one of those perfectly understated and humble good guys who never lets anyone down, has a heart of gold, does the right thing, blah blah blah. He’s a great father to Leisel and his love for cigarettes, playing the accordion, and teaching his daughter to read in the wee hours of the morning should make him interesting, but he wasn’t. Rosa, who was mildly more interesting with her hot-temper and violent tongue, was described by Death at the end as truly being an exceptional person for having taken in a foster child and a Jewish man, no questions asked. He also attests several times that though she was seemingly cruel, Rosa did love her foster child a great deal. I get that there are some kooky parents out there, but one does not usually show love by berating her child and beating her with a wooden spoon. This seemed to be some weirdo attempt of Zusak’s to add some spice in, and it missed the mark.
The only character I truly liked and appreciated was Leisel’s snarky and troublesome best friend, Rudy. He was well-rounded, flawed, and adorable, and his unrequited childhood love for Leisel was passable. Rudy’s antics and his constant need for approval are human and heart-breaking. He is a perfect nitwit sometimes, gets beat up often and thoroughly, and drags Leisel into all manner of questionable activities, but by golly I really liked him. His death was the only one that almost brought a wee tear to my eye.
Zusak’s characterization, for the most part, was very flat and undeveloped. Even the Jewish man that Hans and Rosa house, Max, left me feeling completely bloodless. (While locked away, all he seems to fantasize about is boxing Hitler in a ring. Not about his family, or a lost love, or freedom…about symbolic boxing. Again, I don’t buy it) I love leaving a book and missing the characters because I’ve grown quite attached to them, but that did not happen here. Zusak had some good material to use and was writing about one of the most heart-wrenching times in human history, but my heart remained uninvolved due to his lack of depth.
Best part: Before meeting Leisel and right around the time of Hitler’s 1936 Olympics, Rudy decides to pain his entire body with charcoal and run around the local track screaming that he’s Jesse Owens. He does this until his father comes to stop him and explains it’s perhaps not the best idea to be celebrating a black man in Nazi Germany. I love this little plotline so much. It properly conveys how children look to their heroes for the right reasons and don’t let prejudice get in the way, which I think is what everyone in Germany needed a reminder of during that time.
Recommend to: High schoolers who are taking European history for the first time and are in need of a little well-rounded perspective.
Reminded me of: A young adult version of Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone, which is a terrific book, inspired by a true story, that talks about the activities of decent Germans in Berlin during WWII.
How I would murder the main character: Although it’s not Leisel’s fault she was bland and two-dimensional, I’d punish her by boiling her in a gigantic vat of pea soup and making her sing Deutschland Über Alles.
Sexy parts: Given that this was intended for young adults, the most scandalous it ever got was when Rudy would bug Leisel to give him a kiss. She never let him, even though nearer the end she almost wanted to (aka: she finally hit puberty). After the bombing when Rudy is found dead, Leisel does finally plant one on his lips, while crying all over him. Although I’m sure Zusak meant for this to be a touching moment, I found it rather gross and predictable.
To sum it up: A well-intended and well-written account of the Holocaust that unfortunately fails to elicit the appropriate response.
Overall: 6
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