“I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves,
straining in circles of light to find more light
until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs
that we follow across a page of fresh snow”– Billy Collins
I am haunted by humans.
It’s through Death’s eyes, personified, that we see Nazi Germany in 1943. Death chooses to tell us the story of a girl he runs into three times, exactly – Liesel Meminger, a young German orphan with a penchant for stealing books, and those surrounding her. In the beginning, nine-year-old Liesel finds a book by her brother’s grave. Its name is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, and it is the first of her many flirts with danger in the form of words. Liesel is on her way to Molching, a small town outside of Munich, and she arrives to her foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, withdrawn and grieving over her brother. Hans is kind; Rosa is uptight and displeased, and they are the people who teach her to belong and to stand in her convictions. Rudy Steiner is Liesel’s neighbor, a gangly, perpetually hungry boy with the perfect Aryan coloring – blond hair, blue eyes. An athlete, a runner obsessed with the American Jesse Owens, he has long attracted the attention of the Hitler Youth but conflicts with their leader. Max Vanderburg is a German Jew, a fist-fighter, a writer, an artist. He is the secret the Hubermanns conceal from the Nazis in their basement, their act of defiance against the regime that rule their lives.
Hans Hubermann is the man who teaches Liesel to read, instilling into her a deep love for words in a time when books were hard to come by. Liesel is driven by her hunger for words, for story, and it is this desire that fuels the novel’s title. Words open up a new world to her, and those around her in times of perilous uncertainty, and it is this main conflict that leads to her truly becoming the book thief, stealing books, relying on words to keep her going through everything. As Liesel interacts with her other neighbors, we are shown a side of Nazi Germany rarely spoken of – the people, torn apart by war and grief, drawn in by Hitler’s words or disillusioned by them. Kindness and cruelty conflict through the novel, portraying the natural compassion of the people in stark contrast to the Nazi regime.
Through her friendships with Rudy and Max, Liesel finds herself. Rudy is thrill-seeking but kind, which endears him to the wary Liesel; he represents retaining innocence even in a war. He does things for the thrill of it, he is entirely dedicated to his sport – he is impulsive but never with the intention of hurting anyone. He teaches Liesel to let loose through running. Max is conflicted and tenacious, a survivor. Liesel and Max’s bond is one strengthened by shared trauma and an unequivocable love for stories. He, more than anyone else, teaches her the impact of words through his own writings and experiences as a Jew, driven out of his own homeland by the government. In short, he gives Liesel hope.
“I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn’t already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race – that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so [condemning] and brilliant.”
It’s a hefty novel, in size and content. Nothing dealing with war is easy, much less Nazi Germany – so be warned. Zusak’s choice of Death as a character, much less as the narrator – the very concept of something so remote and lifeless (in multiple ways) taking on the role of storyteller, bringing life to the tale of one brave girl on the verge of adolescence in the middle of war – that is what sets the story apart. Death straight up tells the reader that he can be affable, but he is not nice – not he, the collector of souls, arrayed in all the world’s colors. But, as the narrative implies, he has compassion, and he takes no joy in the collection of souls. Stylistically, Death’s impartial omnipresence also serves as a unique and entirely fascinating narrative perspective. Between Death’s first-person perspective and his choice to tell the rest of the story in third person, he is sparse with his prose, entirely too dispassionate, but you can feel the slow, grudging admiration he holds for Liesel through their encounters and the effect of words – Liesel’s words – on even Death, the destroyer of worlds.
This is the story of regular citizens – children, really – in a time where they are forced to stand up for their beliefs, even if it costs them their lives. This is a story of hope in the bleakest of times, where words hold a power unable to be snatched away even by the cruelest of regimes.