The Book Thief (book)

The Book Thief (2005)
By Markus Zusak (Picador)

A hefty tome, at 584 pages, 'The Book Thief' is nonetheless a swift read. As I was heading home in a taxi after the Sydney Writers' Festival (where, earlier in the week, I'd briefly met Mr Zusak) I struck up a conversation with the driver, who had incidentally heard a radio interview with "a guy whose name started with Z". He continued to say that his wife had read the book in two days. While I had no such luxury with time, it took me about a week of commuting and a little extra before bed and this morning to finish it.

Plot outline: On the cusp of World War II, a young girl, Liesel, and her brother Werner are travelling with their mother to Munich where they are to be handed over to foster parents. Werner does not survive the train ride and in the aftermath of his burial, Liesel steals her first book, 'The Gravedigger's Handbook'. Liesel arrives alone in a new town, stirs up some trouble and learns to read. As the scars of war deepen, Liesel learns many more things like how to steal and how to hide a Jew in the basement.

First of all I'd like to mention that the plot outline doesn't do all that much justice to the novel. The novel is built on narrative and character relationships, rather than plot and it is the reader's understanding of these that give much more flesh to the plot than the bones I have provided.

The second thing of importance is that the narrator of the book is Death, not Liesel or an unseen third person.

Using the grubby backdrop of war, Zusak's deceptively simple language is poetic but never strays towards being burdened with flowery language, nor cluttered with unnecessary description. His masterstroke is Death's voice, which swaps the stereotype 'doom and gloom' tone for the genial, almost resigned, words of one whose job is simply to collect souls as they die. Death's description of each moment is conducted with clarity and more than a hint of deeper knowledge - who knew that the moment you expire could indicate so much about you as a person?

Liesel's adolescence is a series of big and small changes that steadily builds on the reader's perception of the characters involved. Death is not always present, in fact, his narration is aided by Liesel's own autobiographical written account, from which he borrows to colour the periods between his sightings of her.

As I mentioned, the core of Liesel's story is not so much about events but the relationships that characterise them. Her brother's death leads to nightmares which leads to the strong relationship she builds with her foster father, Hans Hubermann, which then leads to comparisons of her relationship with her foster mother, Rosa, painted as externally maniacal but essentially kind-hearted.

Liesel's friendship with Rudy Steiner, the boy next door, is the gateway to understanding her position at school and in the neighbourhood, as well as providing a healthy dose of fun into their adventures around town - from Rudy's retelling of the Jesse Owens incident, their collusion with a gang of thieves and football games in the park.

Then, with the arrival of Max (a Jew whose father saved Hans' life in WWI), Liesel's love affair with words deepens. In sharing stories, the unlikely pair form a friendship that counters the cruelty of Hitler's war and foregrounds the kindness of the Hubermanns. The Hubermanns, in effect, represent the real Germans whose humanity was drowned out by Hitler's manifesto.

It is here, with Liesel and Max, that Zusak clearly presents the reflexive device on which the novel is perched. 'The Book Thief' is thus seen as Death's narration about Liesel's adolescence containing Max's life and Max's stories. Max's stories further contain references to his friendship with Liesel, to Hitler and also to the power of words.

All this - plot, language, characters, device - is woven seamlessly into a book and it is the simplicity of everything that makes the novel more powerful. I laughed at Liesel's childhood innocence and I cried when her world, at different points scattered throughout the book, crumbled. And cried some more for the last fifty pages. The mark of Zusak's genius.

***** - a new perspective of WWII based on friendship and the power of words using pared back sentimentality