"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak

To say I'm a war story fan -- of all genres, running the whole gamut from fiction to non-fiction -- is a bit of an exaggeration, but I've noticed from time to time how much I enjoy stories about a good war being fought and the characters that play a part in it. This is probably one of the ungirly traits a friend recently attributed to me -- my book tastes don't run to chick lit, though I used to read quite a fair bit of romance novels -- but hey, no skin off my back.

I would think the appeal of a story with war as the backdrop lies in its inherently universal themes of struggle, courage, challenge and love. In war, everything whittles down to the bare essentials of survival. War brings out the best and the worst in people. And of course if you buy the classic psychological mumbo-jumbo about cathartic effect and vicarious living, one also likes to read such books because one would rather live it through the safe medium of books rather than be in it.

"The Book Thief" (henceforth shortened to "TBT") is a great book about a German girl's life in WW2 Germany. I wouldn't go into the storyline since I won't be writing too much about it in this review. She steals books from time to time, but I wouldn't exactly label her a book thief. If you like to know more, check out Wikipedia. Or better yet, go read it. It's not a difficult book to read.

By turns humourous and heart wrenching, I really dig the personification of Death and the way he narrated Liesel's story. He narrates from the sidelines because he is never among the living and because it is Death, we are reminded all too often of the story's context -- in between watching Liesel, he collects souls from both sides of the war, a reminder that in death, everyone is equal.

In one of the numerous scenes of death in the book, Death said, "It kills me sometimes, how people die." Words of endless sorrow from the über soul collector, how infinitely sad can that be, because he will quite literally never die.

The denizens of Himmel Street and people of Morching are a colourful cast of characters, if normal folk trying to cope with war's vagaries. Definitely a powerful and touching story, and one of the most memorable I've read for a while.

5 out of 5.

Link to G's review, offering another perspective of the book. Thanks for the recommendation, even if it took me more than half a year to pick it up!