Reviews

As a contributor to the Young Adult, crossover to Adult genre, Zusack uses throughout The Book Thief, a prose style that is rare, fresh, and absolutely captivating. Here are a dozen plus quotes mostly from less than the first 40 pages;

He uses nouns as verbs;

“Every night, Liesel would nightmare.”
"As the sky began to charcoal toward light, we both moved on."

He alters the nature of things;

“No more flapping. Not for this metallic bird.”
“the smoke exhausted itself.”
“… apartment blocks that looked nervous.”
“empty hat-stand trees.”
“A gang of tears trudged from her eyes.”
“ … and the music would look Liesel in the face.”
“His hair pointed at something on the ceiling.”

Zusak also uses metaphors,

“The world is sagging now, under the weight of all that snow.”
“ … the girl’s head buried into the wooly, worn shallows of her mother’s coat.”
“Curtains of rain were drawn around the car.”
“they sat in the rising pool of darkness.”

Zusak uses juxtaposition, offering us contradictory viewpoints in one;

“A mountain range of rubble was written, designed, erected around her.”
“ … a stranger to kill the aloneness.”
“… the brute strength of the man’s kindness.”

Or he doubles the effect of his prose style by combining their elements,

“one (book) was delivered by a soft, yellow dressed noon.”

Zusak also deliberately uses clique of, “She made mincemeat out of her,” to show the irony inherent in the contrast between words that can hurt the mind and hands that can hurt the body. He also directly says that he is altering a tired clique when he says, “she had more immediate rather than the standard, ‘other,’ or ‘bigger’ fish to fry.”

Zusak’s giveness/inventiveness of words such as ‘misleadence,’ and ‘word shaker,’ are startling in their descriptiveness.

My only hesitation is that I hope the reader has enough background/maturity to be aware of these stylistic unconventional applications of adapting nouns into verbs to recognize them as the brilliant, illegitimate, bastards that they are, and yet not adapt them to every day usage.

Most of these quotations were taken from the first 38 pages of, “The Book Thief,” and there are bountiful, littered jewels throughout the book.

Kusak’s structure of, “The Book Thief,” is told in chaotic narrative of deliberate foretelling, then back grounding, and then immediacy. This gives a narrative frame of “stories within stories,” and adds layers of depth.

Undoubtedly, this is a Holocaust book. And just as the motif of ‘reading,’ as a gift that can rescue is akin to, “Ann Frank’s Diary,” “The Book Thief,” is also a more mature vision of the power of literature.

For the genre it belongs to, that of ‘Young Adult,’ for the stunning prose, and for its story within story structure, this is an almost five.

zo_eeeee's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

sintari's review against another edition

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5.0

If I judge a book by the amount of tears I shed by the end of it, then this is perhaps my favorite book of all time? In essence, the story of a Book Thief and the people she loved first. Oh, and set in Nazi Germany and narrated by Death so you know EXACTLY where this is going, even though you hope it isn't true.

Stylistically, Zusak is a master of verbs and personification. "Her smile was strapped to her face." "The feather poked itself out of the hinges of the church door." I love the structure and the bulleted list that lets us know what every chapter is about. (Me, at the beginning of every chapter: "A bear???" "Max! Max is back!?"

In conclusion, "He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.”

This book stepped on my heart.