Book Reviews
Mitchelstown’s Amy O’Brien is a 16 year old self confessed ‘activist and advocate’, passionate about equity and justice, with a love for reading and baking too.
Amy continues with her book review for readers of TheAvondhu. To access these books for free, visit your local library online or in person. This week’s book is:
Many people might say that this is a fictional book about Nazi Germany, World War II or about death and the truth is, you’d be right. What I take most from Zusak’s words though, is a novel about words and the importance of the stories those words can tell - for better or worse.
The Book Thief is about Liesel, the main character who isn’t Jewish but is a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany. She is raised by her foster parents, learns to read, hides a Jew, finds love in her world of swirling hate and dies. You see, this book is narrated by none other than Death who sees the Book Thief (Liesel) three times.
Death tells us that he sees people in colours before he takes them and in the anniversary edition, the author explains why, ‘ Having him (Death) narrate freed me to describe things (especially colours) in a way that was unusual but oddly familiar. I also decided that Death would refer to the sky, the clouds, the trees and the earth in terms of who. I wanted him to talk about those things as if they were colleagues - as if all the elements of the world, life and death are just part of the same thing. I wanted Death to be the missing piece of us.’
The whole novel is actually Death telling a story about this one helpful girl who escapes him and that he grows to find hope in. I think Death decided to tell us this story because it gives him hope in humanity. The last note in the book from our narrator is even, ‘I have been haunted by humans’.
Towards the end of the book,
Liesel and Death are painfully frustrated, ‘ The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn’t be any of this. Without words, the Fuhrer was nothing.’ I think this is a piece about history that we can use as a lesson for the present; the Holocaust didn’t begin overnight because the genocide, the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group had to begin with prejudice, with antisemitism. Propaganda, twisting language, Mein Kampf changed minds and importantly, hearts; and filled them both with hate. The Holocaust started with small acts and words of hate.
But if that’s true, then creating a world where everyone’s human rights are truly respected can also start with small acts and words of love because we all have the power to make a difference, we just have to decide if it’s going to be for the better or worse. In the Book Thief, one Jewish character literally paints over Hitler’s autobiography and rewrites the pages with the story of his and Liesel’s friendship!
Words have the power to tell stories of hate, that instill fear and feed a hunger for violence, like Mein Kampf but words can also tell love stories, our personal histories within world history and the stories of ‘beautiful and selfless and worthwhile’ humans. To me, this book is about the treasure that is words and how we use them.
‘I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.’