Yuffie's Book Reviews

The Book Thief - by Marcus Zusak

--Published Book--

So this book seems to be on everyone's favorite list. I was expecting great things from this book. Read something life-changing.

And instead I got over 550 pages of boring drivel.

First, the narration. The story is narrated by Death... FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON AT ALL. It's seriously just a gimmick. Death has no direct influence on the story. The first chapter actually had his voice and was pretty original and quirky, but the rest of the story was told with a general narrative voice. Occasionally, Zusak threw in a line or two reminding us that Death is actually telling this story, but seriously, there was no point to it. Pure gimmick.

And then in the story itself--Death made it clear that he didn't know exactly what was going on with every single person all the time. Some lines revealed this when he stated that this person "might" be doing this or "probably" did that. That begs me to ask the question: then why the heck is he stalking Liesel (the MC) for every waking moment of her life?

Despite this being Nazi Germany, Liesel has one of the dullest and uneventful lives of all time.

We get like 300 pages of her just learning to read, wetting the bed, listening to her papa play accordion, going to school, delivering the laundry....

Seriously, why Death has any interest in her whatsoever has yet to be revealed. Again, this is NAZI GERMANY. There were COUNTLESS individuals who actually made an impact (good or bad), and Death chose to stalk the dullest girl in the world. I've heard of a woman who worked as a plumber in concentration camps and hid jewish babies at the bottom of her toolbox to smuggle them out. She trained her dog to bark obnoxiously when she came out of the building to distract the guards so they wouldn't hear the babies. THAT is a person Death should follow around. Not irrelevant Liesel.

God, this was so dull. It was almost on Old Man and the Sea level. The writing wasn't bad, though, so that made it a little more bearable, but almost the entire book I kept groaning and losing focus and had to force myself to keep turning pages in hopes that something interesting would happen.

Another quip with this story is the fact that Liesel is constantly referred to as "the book thief". She never even stole a book. The first book she "stole" was when some kid accidentally dropped in the snow and she picked it up and took it home. The rest she "stole" from the mayor's wife's library, but really the wife knew Liesel was coming in and just pretended not to notice.

And I'm sure those books (since Zusak did mention the titles) had some kind of symbolic meaning, but honestly, I didn't care at that point because this was so. damn. dull.

About 100 pages before the end, Death goes and TELLS US THE ENDING. I just sat there staring at the book like, "are you kidding me right now...? this has to be a joke... you're seriously spoiling your own ending....?" And (not) spoiler: they all die. But not Liesel, because she's a special snowflake for some reason.

What.

Seriously, what.

So then I was like, "okay... maybe he'll twist it around somehow..." nope. That's exactly what happened. And the impact of the ending scene was just so watered down becuase we knew it was coming that I honestly didn't care. The deaths of everyone Liesel knew had zero emotional impact or affect on me.

Now, onto the writing. i said it was okay, but maybe I was being too generous.

The metaphors and similes made no sense. Sounded like something a 5 year old would come up with. not even.

"the breakfast colored sun"

"hair like lemons"

"chocolate-colored sky"

uhmm.

Zusak puts a scene break every few lines. That's right, I said every few LINES. What this does is give the final line of each "scene" a bigger and more dramatic impact. This is a great device writers can use, but done too often, it has the opposite effect. So this entire book felt like it was being told by a drama queen. Incredibly melodramatic, and it makes the author sound almost pretentious by him saying, "look, 90% of the lines in here are awesome and should be emphasized! Look at all my pretty lines! The deep meaning! look, look, look! And be amaaaazeeeddd."

Shut up and write the damn story without trying to bring attention to every other line.

The characters, like I said, were dull. I guess they were layered, but with such a slow-paced and uneventful plot surrounding them, I barely sympathized with them. It wasn't heart-wrenching when they died or something bad happened to them. I just didn't care.

So overall, this book was awful.

2/5 stars.