Together, they slog their way through the book she took from the graveyard. It is Hans Hubermann, her brave and kind Papa, who draws Liesel out from the fog of mourning, pulling her slowly back into the real world through the power of words. She meets her foster parents, a sharp-tongued woman named Rosa and an accordion-playing housepainter she comes quickly to know as Papa. She carries the book with her to her new home in a suburb of Munich. Feeling unmoored by grief, she steals the dark volume, hiding it within her clothes. It also causes to commit her very first crime: when standing in the graveyard where her young brother is to be buried, Liesel spots a book. Though too young to fully grasp the meaning of her mother’s disappearance, the loss of her family sparks in Liesel the first kindling of rebellion. Liesel’s mother, it is suggested, was killed by the Nazis for her communist leanings. One particular figure looms large in Death’s ancient memory: Liesel Meminger, the heroine of the story, a plucky Lutheran girl who is orphaned in the first chapter. His job is quite taxing, and even this spectral figure is susceptible to haunting. As he remarks early in the story, WWII is a particularly difficult time for Death. While burdened with the heavy task of ferrying souls from the world of the living, Death is not entirely without humor or a sense of poetry. In fact, I find many young adult novels to be more generous and uplifting (not to mention more entertaining) than so-called literary fiction.īut that’s not to say that The Book Thief lacks literary merit. ![]() Teenagers may enjoy this book, but why would anyone consider that an issue? Some of the greatest books written in the past ten years were written for children, including Rowling’s griping and clever Harry Potter series. While not exactly light reading, the young adult story has proved its near universal appeal, spending over 230 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List, causing some booksellers to reconsider the “young” label, re-shelving it under “fiction.”Īs an obsessive reader of YA novels and a firm believer in the idea that story always trumps genre, I find the entire debate over The Book Thief‘s status rather pointless. A novel set in Nazi Germany and narrated by the grim reaper doesn’t sound particularly whimsical, but Markus Zusak makes the task seem natural, if not easy, in his novel The Book Thief.
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