When Death has a story to tell, you listen. This one is about one peculiar thief, who stole the attention of many a person, and gave back happiness during times when people needed it the most.
The book itself is set in the middle of WWII, in a small German town by the name of Molching, which is a fictional counterpart of Olching, Germany. The narrator of the story, as said before, is Death. His job is to carry souls to the afterlife, and despite the skeletal appearance and emotionless stare that we associate it with, the narrator is actually quite thoughtful and emotional. He has a clear preference for the description of a scene with just colors. The book’s events aren’t in perfect chronological order, to provide foreshadowing and a better explanation of certain events. There are also several moments where Death shares experiences unrelated to the story at hand, to correctly show how his true job takes place.
We start, sensibly enough, by being introduced to the protagonist. Her name is Liesel, also known as the Book Thief. She is transported to Molching by train, and during the trip, her first stolen book of several is no longer lying in the snow. When Liesel arrives at where she will stay for an indeterminate amount of time, we see her foster parents for the first time: Rosa Hubermann, a woman with a penchant for impressively strong emotion, and Hans Hubermann, a painter who works for cigarettes and plays the accordion. After staying in the house for a day or two, she is introduced to the rest of her class. One person stands out: Rudy Steiner, a fan of Jesse Owens utterly smitten with her. The story then follows all of their lives through the events of WWII with added commentary by the specter narrator.
It’s a unique take on one of the most fought over topics in the entire Information Age: Fighting itself. Mainly, how it affects regular people who want nothing to do with the brutality occurring all around them. That kind of perspective isn’t often seen, as the objects most argued over are the nations as a whole, effectively saying “just their military and government”. The citizens often don’t get a say in when, how, or why their country goes to war, but they are forced to adopt its effects, or be thrust away from that society. The one small critique present is the timeline and place jumping between several stories at once. It can decrease the shock of events and can make the story difficult to follow at times. The execution of it was good enough to make it able to be seen as a positive change, but it isn’t perfect.
Overall, The Book Thief is a good look at the lives of ordinary people when their lives are both normal and affected by war. It’s quite long at about 550 pages, but offers a truly impressive insight almost never discussed when talking about the Holocaust, or any other major conflict.
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