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.
(I got this book from a Little Free Library at a local park – a small weatherproof box that’s usually stuffed full of various books people have left there. It’s a neat system. I’ll definitely be putting The Book Thief back soon so that someone else can enjoy it.)