Summary:
A gripping story of a young girl's childhood in Nazi Germany as told through the eyes of Death, who gets busier the deeper we get. She travels with her mother and brother to Germany, to a woman in the German version of Child Protection Services. On the train ride there, her brother dies, Death gets his first look at the girl, and the girl gets her hands on the first book. The story follows the girl to her permanent home in a small town outside Munich, where she develops her love of reading and books, and where all hell is about to break loose in a couple short years.
Thoughts:
What an incredible story. Liesel, the girl, is faced with two major losses right as we meet her. Her brother dies on the train, and her mother leaves her with CPS who put her into a foster home. The hits will keep coming, too, as one might expect from a book about the Holocaust. As the book trudges along to its and the war's demise, we meet her foster parents, Hans and Rosa, her friend Rudy, the town mayor and his wife, and a host of other characters, many of whom do not survive beyond 1945. There is so much to this story, and seeing it through the eyes of Death himself makes it all the more poignant, we watch Death get busier with each passing day. Still, Death finds as much good as he can while he must carry away the souls of the lost, and he seems to rejoice over the souls that manage to escape him.
It is a very large book, and it certainly takes a toll on the spirit. But it is beautifully written. Don't avoid it because of its size or subject matter. It's damn good.
Pages: 576
Genre: Historical fiction
Grade: A+
Would I Recommend?: Absolutely. Just be prepared with cheesy crap afterward to get yourself out of the doldrums of Holocaust sadness.
Book 3 of 30 for the year
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