Kay's Bookshelf

Reading the last few pages I actually cried. I don’t cry that often (at least not when reading books) but this time I did, that is how attached I got to some of the characters, that’s how intense Mr. Zusak’s writing can be (and no, that’s not a spoiler; as I see it both good and bad things happen at the end, and both sets of them made me cry just as hard).

When the story begins Liesel is a nine years old girl that is brought by her mother to live with foster parents, so that she’ll not starve. She is to live on Himmel Street (Himmel = Heaven in German), with a wardrobe-shaped woman with a foul mouth and a quiet man with silver eyes. Perhaps not the greatest premise in the world, and at first I was a bit nervous for Liesel to have to live with these strange people. Little did I know how wrong I was, as a hundred or so pages later “these strange people” ended up being my most favorite characters of all. I won’t write more about them ’cause I don’t want to spoil anyone’s pleasure in discovering them for themselves :)

The relationships between the characters are the very cornerstone of the story: the community in Himmel street is a tight knitted one, everybody knowing each other and is friendly (or not, in some cases) towards other people. As time passes, the dynamics change, the relationships evolve, and by the time the book ends I felt in the middle of them, knowing them the way I did, with their faults and hopes and moments of despair. I even cared for Frau Diller, the Hitler devotee, or Pfiffikus, the guy whose foul mouth was worse even than Rosa Hubermann’s, Liesel’s foster mother. I did not liked these two, they were the characters I least related to, I least enjoyed reading about, and yet I cared for them as part of their community, the one built around Liesel and her books.

A few words about the narrator too: Death (did you guess it?) is diligently doing its job. He is perpetually at awe when it comes to humans though, and in these circumstances his finding Liesel’s journal is a Godsend. He (is Death a he or a she?) reads it and re-reads it, trying to make sense of it, trying to read between the lines, trying to catch a glimpse of what it’s like to be human, particularly in those troubled times. In Death’s own words, this is what he most struggled with:

“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 damning and brilliant.”

I found the writing style to be quite interesting especially when it came to the way the story was told. Death doesn’t care about suspense so he always discloses the outcomes waiting to happen in the near future. However he is fascinated by the chain of events that resulted in the said outcomes, and this is what he pays attention to, this is what the story is actually about. It was an interesting experience, as usually people (or at least I) read books in order to find out what happens next; this one I read and read in order to find out the “why” and the “how” of what I already knew would happen (in a way it reminded me of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children where the narrator did something similar, as he kept disclosing now and then events that were to happen in the near future, taking away the element of surprise but getting me all the more interested in the “how” part).

Mr. Zusak’s take on death and afterlife is only vaguely mentioned in the novel. There is Death, of course, that comes and takes the souls. There is also God, cold and far and not answering questions. And that is it. I understand the reason for that, of course, as the “what happens after” part is not central to the story in any way, quite the opposite (delving in too many details about it would have perhaps alienated some of the readers), and yet while reading I very often discovered I was fairly curious to know more about Death’s actual job, so to speak. OK, he comes, takes souls away, and then, and then?

What I liked most: The imagery the author used, hands down. There are so many instances of what I liked about it that I cannot even begin to list them all. Here are two quotes chosen at random from the ones I loved (and definitely not the best, but the imagery I loved is there):

The mayor’s wife opened the door and she was not holding the bag, like she normally would. Instead, she stepped aside and motioned with her chalky hand and wrist for the girl to enter.
“I’m just here for the washing.” Liesel’s blood had dried inside of her. It crumbled. She almost broke into pieces on the steps.

When Liesel left that day, she said something with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words were struggled with, carried on her shoulder, and dropped as a bungling pair at Ilsa Hermann’s feet. They fell off sideways as the girl veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat on the floor, large and loud and clumsy.

As in this second quote, it often seemed to me that the author enjoyed playing with the very idea of “word”, turning something that by definition is only a sound in a visible, tangible thing that some people interact with. Quite a novel idea (at least for me) and very well put into practice too. Years from now, were I to remember one thing only from this novel I’d pretty much bet this one would be it.

I also liked the way Liesel’s conscience took in her mind the shape of her dead brother, with a grazed knee where he hurt it when she pushed him out of her sight when she did something she knew it was bad, and with a completely healed wound when she did something that put her conscience at ease. I very much enjoyed these particular scenes both because of the idea (once again, something new for me) but also because of the depth they had (Liesel had loved her brother dearly, and her pushing him off like that is a very relevant sign of the distress she was in at that particular moment). The intertwining between the two worlds — the imaginary one, where the brother now resided, and the real one, the steps that had hurt the (imaginary) brother’s knee was quite a treat to me too.

I also loved the way the author answered when asked about his inspiration for the book (full interview here):

“I thought of Hitler destroying people with words, and now I had a girl who was stealing them back, as she read books with the young Jewish man in her basement and calmed people down in the bomb shelters. She writes her own story –and it’s a beautiful story– through the ugliness of the world that surrounds her.”

A beautiful story indeed.

What I liked least: I very much loved it on the whole.

Recommend it to? Anyone. It’s written in a simple style and yet one that I tremendously enjoyed. It’s also one of my favorite books.

Written by the same author:
I Am the Messenger

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Popularity: 26% [?]