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Book Summary

Reviewed by Matt Berman

Death himself narrates the story of Liesel, a German girl left with foster parents just before the outbreak of World War II. Along the way to her new home with her younger brother, he dies, and after the funeral Liesel steals The Gravedigger's Handbook, though she cannot yet read. It is only the first of what will become a series of book thefts.

As she settles in with her harsh but caring foster mother, Rosa, and kind foster father, Hans, she gets to know her poor neighborhood and learns to read. Her obsession with books grows as the war closes in, rationing is put in place, air raids begin, and Hans takes in a Jewish man to hide in the basement. And through it all, Death travels the Earth, taking in more and more souls every day.

Is It Any Good?

4

It doesn't get much worse than World War II for sheer bloody-minded carnage, destruction, and hate -- it takes a lot of art to bring something wonderful out of that. Yet such is the heroic and subtle job author Markus Zusak does in THE BOOK THIEF that the reader, for instance, feels nothing but pity when the most virulent Nazi on the block loses both her sons to the war.

This is a very long book, and the author takes his sweet time getting on with it. The participation of Death as narrator is first seamless -- and then essential, as his care for the humans who haunt him comes shining through. And there's a powerful payoff in the Shakespearean ending when Zusak wallops you again and again with the fates of these people, good and bad, whom you've come to care about. This is a devastatingly powerful book that bears several rereadings, and it should become a staple of literature discussion groups for sophisticated teen and adult readers.

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