Rating: 5/5
Liesel Meminger’s brother, Werner, died on the way. Liesel watched him. A cough, a splutter, and then he looked at the ground and did not look back up again. The bed waiting for him at the Hubermanns’ house in Molching would remain empty. Liesel would sit up until late at night, watching it, and picturing him sitting up too, talking to her. But it would never happen.
It was at his funeral that the book thief stole for the first time. It was a heavy thing called ‘The Gravedigger’s Handbook’, and though she could not yet read, she would spend hours in days to come staring at the words that she could not understand. Then Hans Hubermann, the most patient, gentle and kind accordionist whom Liesel would come to love most in the world, taught her how to read. Liesel’s career as a book thief is fated by circumstance: by Hans Hubermann, her best friend Rudy Steiner, the Fuhrer, and a feathery-haired Jew who spends two years hiding in their basement.
The book was written in an easy-to-read yet very interesting style, with flashbacks and extracts from the future fitted in here and there, and amazingly original and powerful metaphors that really make the images come alive for the reader. For example, Molching has ‘empty hat-stand trees’; ‘the clouds [of Stalingrad] were dirty, like footprints in melting snow’; ‘the streets were ruptured veins’; and ‘the sky was like soup, boiling and stirring’.
I loved this book. Zusak used a beautiful way to describe the life of Liesel Meminger, the Steiners, and Hans and Rose Hubermann. He really makes you think about the war as you read it, and contemplate the people who risked or lost their lives in an attempt to save others. The way he writes about how the Nazis treated Jews, and how he (Death, as a narrator) thought they should be treated is amazing. The main characters were all very kind, even Rosa Hubermann and Frau Holtzapfel – for though they may have a hard shell on the outside, once you crack it, they are all beautiful people.