Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief The Book Thief by Markus Zusak<br/><br/>

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak had been on my to read list for some time and I never got around to it until a Goodreads friend lent me a copy.I stopped after page two.  It surprised me how much I didn't like immediately.  The narrator is 'death'.  The style is non-traditional/experimental.  I simply couldn't stand it.<BR>I had at it again.  I decided to give it a go, get past what immediately annoyed me and see how it turned out.  In the end, I got past the writing style, found the characters to be interesting, and thought the book was decent.<BR>To summarize nearly 550 pages, the main character is Liesel, a young girl whose mother sends her and her brother to live with another family.  On the train ride her brother dies.  She arrives to live with Hans and his wife Rosa.  They live in a poor neighborhood and Liesel's best friend is Rudy.  As the story unfolds, the Nazi's play a greater role in daily life.<BR>The family's life gets further complicated when Hans takes in Max, the son of a man who saved Hans' life in the first world war.  Max is Jewish and hiding to keep from being put in a concentration camp.  Max and Liesel develop a strong relationship.The story revolves around Liesel growing up amidst the rise of the Nazi's and the war coming to Germany in the form of air raids.<BR>From the same war, I had read City of Thieves recently and really liked that story much more than this one.

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Posted via email from Ross Nunamaker

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