The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

• read Apr 2023
• rated great

What a book. What a terrible, wonderful book.

I loved it. The use of death as the narrator and its odd ways of describing the world. The atypical writing style, with bolded, titled important tidbits. The “spoilers” that manage expectations without actually spoiling anything.

Of course, the story is great as well, but I was hooked by the prose within a few pages, even before the story developed. Zusak is quite the writer.

The Book Thief captures our complicated, confusing humanity – “[our] ugly and [our] beauty” – in a captivating way. I can’t recommend it enough.

[This page was last updated on April 12, 2023.]