Liesel Meminnger is just a little girl. Being separated from here mother and adopted by some strangers makes her life even harder, not mentioning that the second World War was about to start. Her step-mother, Rosa was rude with her calling her "Saumensch"(I don't know what that means cause I forgot but you will definetly find out throughout the book) but her father was good and he understood the awkward situation in which Leslie was. She started reading by accident (I won't tell how she got her first book cause you SHOULD really read this novel). Finding the first stollen book under her sheets, Hans Hubermann (her father), taught her the basics of reading and everynight, after the usual nightmares, they would stay till the morning, Liesel sitting on Hans' laps, reading from the book and pointing out the words she didn't know.
She also had a very good friend, Rudy Steiner. They used to play football together and had a lot of stealing too.
Unfortunately, this book shows just how hard it was not only for the foreigners but for the Germans as well, to live under the heavy arm of the third Reich. Eve though Liesel tries to overcome the bads of living as a poor and unimportant citizen of a small town, she doesn't get the childhood that every kid should get. The only times she felt happy were when she either read or played with her friends on the street.
The author is using the par derriere technique to show us what happens to this poor little girl throughout the book. She doesn't know that, being the center of another universe - having caught the attention of the narrator, who plays the role of Death, in a subject way, which lets the readers know how much he cares about Liesel - she gets to see everyone close to her in a any way die while somehow death is either covering her or making her hurt more, leaving her alone in the middle of a war, where strangers fight with the urge to kill the other person, no matter who they are.
Ironically, the narrator, having cleaned the face of earth from anyone however related to Liesel, left her with no other than a Jew, Max with whom she starts a really close friendship. This way, the author is showing us that, despite the war that was going on throughout that period, two kind of people that, in the face of the Third Reich couldn't stand by each other, created such a relationship, such a friendship that is somehow opposite but at the same time health to the things that were taking place at that time. These two characters show us that, along that period, not all Germans as well as not all Jews were fighting and were holding grudges, because they were trying to see behind the invisible wallow politics and prejudice.
The Book Thief is a mindblowing novel that will give you goose bumps and you won't stop reading it until it's done. That's how you can describe this piece of art. Marcus Zusak did an incredible job writing this book and I'm glad that i had the chance of reading it.
- 13:58:00
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