I was apprehensive about reading this YA novel as it has been many years since I have read one, having since gravitated to more adult and literary novels, and I did not want to judge it from the "literary snob's" perspective.
So I guess my comments need to be appreciated in that light.
The premise is interesting: the war viewed from the perspective of Germans, both those loyal and those disapproving of Hitler.
Not all Germans were Jew-hating xenophobes, but all German's paid the price for the Fuhrer's megalomania.
The narrator is even more interesting: Death, who is overworked and exhausted from the sheer number of souls he has to extract out of the war's carnage and take over to the other side.
The story centres around an orphan German girl, Liesel, who is raised by a compassionate and kind house painter and anti-Nazi, Hans Hubermann and his equally compassionate but brusque wife, Rosa.
Liesel is considered "slow" in school but teaches herself to read by stealing books from the most unusual places, at a time when books were being burned by the Nazis.
She even befriends the taciturn Mayor's wife, who encourages Liesel to read and allows her to steal from the secret library in the mayoral home.
Hans encourages Liesel in her quest for literacy by reading the stolen books with her, often late at night when Rosa is asleep.
The family helps a Jew, Max, seeking refuge from the Nazis.
Max lives in his hosts' basement for almost two years, placing the Hubermans in danger.
During that period an unspoken love develops between Liesel and Max, expressed only in illustrated stories written by the latter on painted-over pages of Mein Kampf.
Leisel is pursued by her school mate Rudy-who runs faster than Jesse Owen-who would like nothing better than to kiss her, but she denies him this privilege, much to her later disappointment.
Shades of Anne Frank's Diary abound, albeit from the German perspective.
Liesel soon graduates from reading stolen books to writing her life story, just like Anne did.
The story moves very slowly towards its inevitable climax and is more a chronicle of three years in the life of Liesel, without a strong narrative arc.
With Death as the narrator, we are forewarned of the inevitable tragedy to befall the Hubermans and their neighbours.
And forewarned is an understatement for Death continues to give us chunks of advance information-call it foreshadowing on steroids-on what is going to happen to all these characters, which I found irritating.
If Death was seeking to add a shock effect to my reading experience, he failed.
Despite inventive devices such as bold indented notices littering each chapter to give us sudden bursts of new information or make side comments, and the using of Max's cartoon pictures for relief, I found the clipped paragraphs, the one line sentences, and the sentimentality oozing out of the tragedy to be a bit overwhelming at times.
Perhaps a younger audience may find this style more engaging.
And yet to counterbalance this overdone treatment, there is great imagery: inmates' gas chamber experiences, civilians under aerial bombardment, the Dachau-bound Jewish prisoners reacting to a piece of bread found on the street, Rosa sitting for hours with her absent husband's accordion, the distraction that reading a book aloud inside an air-raid shelter brings to its cramped occupants, and Max "stealing stars from the sky" when he sees the outside world after months of living shut away in the Huberman's basement.
It is clear that not only despots like Saddam and Gaddafi drop bombs on innocent civilians, the Allies did their fair share of collateral damage when they bombed German cities during WWII.
We know how things are going to end, badly for all, Germans and Jews alike.
There is little hope in this book.
Even Liesel who lives to a ripe old age after the war, is left an empty husk.
Although she is re-united with Max after Hitler is defeated, it is not clear what became of their future relationship.
Perhaps this aspect may have been developed more at the expense of wading in lot of unnecessary sentimentality.
The lasting impression left on me by this book was not just that war is a futile endeavour - many books have been written about that - but that the power of words surpasses death.
The book thief steals books to learn, then destroys her life story because she is incensed with the power of words, in their ability to destroy; after all, Hitler had used words to dazzle and blind his people into following his mad dream.
But our narrator Death rescues her story from the trash pile because he knows that Liesel's words are more powerful than he is-another powerful image!