The Book Thief

This Zusack classic is one of the few YA novels that I can think of that contain any sense of pure magic realism. The character of "Death" being my primary concentration for this review - contains so much powerful emotion that cannot be observed by the counter-cultural "Grim Reaper". Death is a character that has a multi-layered sense of perception that is almost human-like, but then lacks very basic complexes that yet separate him from us. This is the real classic beauty of the YA novel at its finest. Zusack presents him perfectly, almost as if Death is the only certainty in a world of torture and misunderstanding.

Characters:

Death is probably the best character of the modern YA I have ever encountered. Death apparently "has a heart" (Zusack, 2005) and this is overwhelming to us, as readers - to know that Death is now feeling and sensing. Something we felt Death lacked, and this is what separated Death from us - we now know and realise that Death does feel things and it is this that brings us into a state of sympathetic cyclical reality. We are constantly remembering that this is Death and then realising that Death has sensory emotion - just like us. We are detaching and relating in ways we never knew possible - something that was conceptual functionally shifts to something personal. This shift to personification brings a relatable sense of though-provoking epiphany to the piece. As if it is artwork of the human abstract as opposed to 'just a book'. 

Themes:

I believe that the theme of utter importance in this novel is innocence. The art of innocence is woven into the book via relation and attachment being struck alongside detachment and distance. This is done through the writing style of Zusack having an emotive blast - harming us as readers, and then spending the rest of the section stitching up the psychological wound. Zusack's piece de resistance is his emotive connotation - Death is positively connotative of the human sensory abstract - and this is not something we are used to. So we, like the protagonist, are forced into relation with Death and begin to realise that we are not as innocent and detached as we thought we were. This emotive blast and epiphanic vision of Zusack's beautiful and poetic writing gives us, piecemeal, a divulging perceptive glance at the only thing that remains at the end of the novel - the innocence of the true artists in a world of destruction. Death is the only certainty in this self-annihilating war on a global scale (World War 2).  

Storyline:

Beginning in, yet constantly denying, the values and tortures in a very graphic second world war - Zusack's historical intellect meanders its way through the rocky cliffs of personification of conceptual items. The term book thief being applied to the protagonist gives us a negation - but this negation in a world of war only makes us sympathetic to the thief and their friend (Death). The realisation and first encounter with Death is the ultimate loss of innocence and an embodiment of the act of ageing and maturing. The forced growth of the protagonist in a world filled with war is symbolically represented by the meeting with the only concept that is completely true of mankind (and especially of the war), Death. I feel that the storyline mirrors the themes and characters perfectly. The loss of innocence and the regaining of it makes Death almost seem like the creator and the destroyer - which is common of religious text and historical conceptual belief. Zusack completes it with an end line that is almost tearfully perfect:

"I am haunted by humans." 

Brilliant. 

Verdict:

I give this book 9 out of 9

100% for characters: The character of Death is a great force upon the novel, evoking so many emotions such as grief, catharsis, pathos, realisation, denial and acceptance. Sound like a concept you know? 

100% for themes: The theme of innocence with the intermingling of Death and our protagonist give us a sense of death and dying within a novel concentrating on only one particular person who resides in the second world war. On a grand scale - this is a sort of microcosm of the world war's loss of innocence. A brilliant symbol of humanism and monstrosity. 

100% for storyline: I could never say anything bad about this storyline. Creating it as a YA novel must've been difficult. I mean, I've got people who don't like reading to read it and never once has anyone come to me and said it was a bad book. The storyline is so perfectly connected to its themes and characters that we cannot take it all in upon first reading - we must read it like an incantation in order for its spell to have its full impact. The true magic of The Book Thief.