I finished The Book Thief a few weeks ago, and since then I have been gathering my thoughts to write this review: after all, it’s not often you read a book narrated by Death (though unlike Terry Pratchett’s version, he doesn’t TALK IN BLOCK CAPITALS), set in Nazi Germany, about a family who risk their lives to harbour a Jewish fistfighter, and where the central character has a passion for books that she can only feed by stealing.

The narrative tone and style of this book entirely defines and permeates it – Death, whose tender affection for humanity might surprise us, is a damn good narrator (he assures us he does not carry a scythe around). He feels benevolent towards humanity, but at the same time is baffled by its capacity for destruction and violence. The events of the Second World War mean that Death is even busier than normal, but he is still able to be everywhere at once, all-knowing, all-seeing.

Our narrator frequently breaks up his narrative with emboldened interjections, which can be philosophical, instructional or integral to the narrative:

A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT

Please be calm, despite that previous threat.

I am all bluster –

I am not violent.

I am not malicious.

I am a result.

These are such a striking feature of the book and I think they work wonderfully well. The other unusual feature of the book is the inclusion of several pictorial stories, as created by the characters. I can see that it’s these two features that have led to The Book Thief as being classed as a book for young adults in some markets – despite the horrors inherent in the subject matter, they soften the story. Perhaps because Death does not perceive time like us humans, he has a tendency to skip ahead, gently foreshadowing death and suffering to come for the characters we are coming to love, and making their fates slightly less shocking when they come to pass.

The plot concerns Liesel, given over by her mother to the foster care of the Hubermann family. Liesel’s little brother dies in the course of the journey to their new carers, and at that time an event occurs that changes her life – she steals the handbook of a gravedigger from the graveyard where her brother is being buried. Rosa and Hans, her foster parents, are great characters – Hans, laid back and loving, encourages Liesel’s love of reading, despite the unconventional book; Rosa’s tough exterior conceals a loving heart, and her trademark insults are a joy. Liesel forms a great alliance with local boy Rudy Steiner; they get up to all kinds of mischief, including indulging in Liesel’s taste for book theft. In the background to begin with, and then increasingly to the fore, the Second World War is encroaching further and further into the daily life of the Hubermanns and the other residents of the town of Molching.

All of this would be fruitful territory for fiction anyway, but the fateful decision taken by Hans Hubermann to take in the son of a former WWI army comrade and hide him in their house condemns his family to years of subterfuge and worry – because Max Vandenburg is a Jew. The relationship that the family form with Max, especially the bond that he and Liesel develop, is at the core of the book, and it’s a relationship which endures the tragedies that beset the people of Molching, the Jews of Europe and the German people as a whole.

The Book Thief is a brave book to have written – to talk about the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust for a young adult readership is a daring objective, and Markus Zusak carries it off with aplomb. It’s a great achievement, and a hugely life-affirming work that should be read by adults and young adults alike.

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