The Book Thief By Markus Zusak
This story is narrated by Death during World War II, and it is the story of a young German girl (Liesel) who comes of age during one of the most horrific times in modern history. Death has a personality. If something bad is about to happen, Death warns you ahead of time. My favorite part is when "he" stomps on a framed picture of Hitler on his way to retrieve a thousand souls from a bombing raid. Death is trying to understand the human race as much as the humans are. When "his" job becomes unbearable, he watches the color of the sky as he gathers the souls and carries them away. The descriptions of the sky are like nothing I've ever read.
When I read this book, I was not very excited about it, but it was a gift and I have to admit that the title really caught me. So, I read it and now I believe this is a very good and strong story about World War II, to explain you my better I will name the three main reasons.
First of all, I love that this book is narrated by the death. I know it might be a little morbid, but at the same time, the death provides a good perspective of the human being. The death criticizes humans for being so destructive and noxious, but at the same time "he" is resigned with us, so "he" just makes his job, which is very busy in war time. Another good thing of having the death as a narrator is that he does not care about suspense, so since the beginning, he points the three times she met with the book thief, and describes the scenarios. He is very descriptive too.
The second reason is the characters. Almost all of them are mean or insensitive, so you hate them, but with the progress of the book they change and you start to appreciate them and understand them. I love this type the books in which you witness the change of the characters, their personal growth. Also, they represent the perfect example of the people in war time. They know they might lose love ones, but they are reignited to this fact.
The third reason is that this book is unusual because normally when you read or watch something about the Holocaust, usually is from the Jewish side. But this story is from the German side and you can see the suffering of the people, especially the poor ones, and understand that not all the Germans were with Hitler and some of them joined to the Nazis to survive. Besides this, I love the way the author describes the feelings of the characters, it is very real and honest.
This book will not have a happy ending, and perhaps you will cry with it a lot. But if you love to read and you care about characters, and if you love to eat words, I am sure that most of you will enjoy it. I usually do not like war stories, but I could easily make an exception with this one and read it one more time.