Sándor Márai is a relatively recent rediscovery on the stage of 20th-century European literature. A Hungarian of mixed heritage, he travelled and settled all over Europe, working as a writer and critic in the years between the two World Wars. His decisions to write in his native language and keep a very private life meant he never gained fame outside of Hungary, and so his works have only recently been translated.
This kind of story makes for good sales, and for a while, everybody was reading Márai (although I can only speak for the German market here, where translated literature generally has a much bigger share). Embers is my first encounter with the author and his style, and I can see how the descriptions of the Austro-Hungarian heyday and its many characters can capture an audience. The past is always appealing, and Márai's own experience of it makes the novel reassuringly authentic.
The setting is simple: It is 1940, and Henrik, an aged Hungarian general, finally gets a visitor he has been waiting to see for 41 years. The novel narrates one single night, in which the general's best friend Konrád, who disappeared mysteriously in 1899, faces the questions that have been haunting Henrik all his life.
The first part of the book briefly introduces the main characters and their history. Mirroring the general's dream-like existence and constant occupation with the past, the facts are presented in a very compacted style, the products of a mind that has been ordering them for decades and is now describing them without emotion. Although very interesting in literary terms, this makes it hard for the reader to connect, and I had a hard time wanting to continue with the novel. Fairly quickly though, we reach the main part of the novel, the confrontation of the two friends, which is a monologue by Henrik, detailing the facts he has come to terms with over the years, and merely asking Konrád two questions which he hope will help both of them find closure.
As a novel, Embers is more interesting and clever than it is moving. The whole thing feels incredibly well planned, almost like a one-man play. Stylistically, everything fits, but even though the story culminates in an existential question, I found myself not caring much. I could tell Marái was a journalist, which in itself is nothing terrible, of course, but sacrifices the emotion that lies at the heart of such a story. I will read more of his novels, because they deal with a place and time I would like to know more about, but it will feel like a bit of work.
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
CBR-IV #2: David Nicholls: Starter For Ten
I must be getting old. I'm quite sure that only a few years ago, the story of a spotty, insecure teenager with an ever-so-uncool obsession with University Challenge would have amused me no end. I would have nodded sagely at every confession of adolescent confusion and the constant feeling of one's own shortcomings. I would have pretended to know what it's like to live in a smelly student home and drink disgusting homebrew. I would have wanted in on it! But now, at the tail-end of my twenties, I seem to have become the humourless enemy.
Or. Maybe Starter For Ten just isn't the brilliant book I thought it would be. It's one of those books that is frequently mentioned in other reviews, until you decide you better read it yourself. The story sounds good enough: Nineteen-year-old Brian is too clever for his own good (though also a bit too naive) and decides to leave his depressing hometown and his widowed mother to dedicated his life to the study of English Literature at university. He jumps at the chance to be on the university's Challenge team, promising televised glory as well as a chance to excel at the one thing Brian has ever had in common with his late father. So far, so neatly planned. Brian, however, is an antihero, and over-the-top so. He's not pretty, not wise, not actually very good at English literature, and within half a day also hopelessly in love.
You can guess what happens next. There's a lot of disappointment, hair and skin disasters, messed-up dates, uncomfortable nakedness and things-that-every-first-year-student-can-relate-to. But it's not actually all that funny, and our hero is not actually all that likeable. It's a quick, amusing read, but it left me cold.
There are a few redeeming features. Brian's realisation that while he loves literature, he's not academically brilliant gives the whole romp the little downer it needs. Nicholls manages to pin down bits of the truth every now and then, but for every critical thought there's either a banal embarrassment (naked parents? Really?) or a very unlikely sexual encounter waiting in the wings. It's all a bit meh.
However, the most disappointing aspect for me was the lack of actual University Challenge action. I might be just the nerd Nicholls was going for, but I can't help but feel that when your big selling point is a well-known quiz show, there should actually be a few pages of quizzing in the book. But for all the romantic longing, the hero's big goal (finally making his father proud) falls by the wayside. The finale is a good one, but there is minimal build-up, and it's quite formulaic and predictable.
I guess grumpy old me is just having a hard time connecting with the young people. And liking a book without liking the hero is a difficult thing.
Or. Maybe Starter For Ten just isn't the brilliant book I thought it would be. It's one of those books that is frequently mentioned in other reviews, until you decide you better read it yourself. The story sounds good enough: Nineteen-year-old Brian is too clever for his own good (though also a bit too naive) and decides to leave his depressing hometown and his widowed mother to dedicated his life to the study of English Literature at university. He jumps at the chance to be on the university's Challenge team, promising televised glory as well as a chance to excel at the one thing Brian has ever had in common with his late father. So far, so neatly planned. Brian, however, is an antihero, and over-the-top so. He's not pretty, not wise, not actually very good at English literature, and within half a day also hopelessly in love.
You can guess what happens next. There's a lot of disappointment, hair and skin disasters, messed-up dates, uncomfortable nakedness and things-that-every-first-year-student-can-relate-to. But it's not actually all that funny, and our hero is not actually all that likeable. It's a quick, amusing read, but it left me cold.
There are a few redeeming features. Brian's realisation that while he loves literature, he's not academically brilliant gives the whole romp the little downer it needs. Nicholls manages to pin down bits of the truth every now and then, but for every critical thought there's either a banal embarrassment (naked parents? Really?) or a very unlikely sexual encounter waiting in the wings. It's all a bit meh.
However, the most disappointing aspect for me was the lack of actual University Challenge action. I might be just the nerd Nicholls was going for, but I can't help but feel that when your big selling point is a well-known quiz show, there should actually be a few pages of quizzing in the book. But for all the romantic longing, the hero's big goal (finally making his father proud) falls by the wayside. The finale is a good one, but there is minimal build-up, and it's quite formulaic and predictable.
I guess grumpy old me is just having a hard time connecting with the young people. And liking a book without liking the hero is a difficult thing.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
CBR-IV #1: Fred Vargas: The Chalk Circle Man
Of course, reading a quick crime novel feels like cheating when you're trying to get a (half) heap of books done in 12 months. But there are crime novels that are so good, you wouldn't mind if there wasn't a solution, a murderer, or even a crime. In the case of Fred Vargas, you'd be perfectly happy just to watch the hero's thoughts meander away.
The Chalk Circle Man is Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg's first appearance in Vargas' work. These days, an unconventional policeman is pretty much the standard in any novel of the genre, but Vargas doesn't only make her hero a shabby-looking, mind-numbingly slow policeman who needs to walk around in circles in order to arrive at a conclusion, she mirrors these qualities in her writing. Having read any of her novels I could get my hands on, rather than going through them in a civilized, chronological manner, I knew what to expect. For a new reader, Vargas' style, as much as her inspector's, might be an adventure. A naturally fast reader, I always find myself hurrying through the text, often without grasping every detail, just because I'm waiting for something to happen. There isn't much action in an Adamsberg case. It's gripping, and pleasantly bizarre in a French way, but the really interesting part is seeing Adamsberg's mind at work.
In this case, the good people of Paris are somewhere between amused and bemused when blue chalk circles start to appear on the sidewalks overnight, each of them drawn around a random object. No case for the police, but Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is worried and decides to keep an eye on things. Soon, the object in the circle is a dead body, and Adamsberg... well, doesn't really do anything. For most of the time he thinks, and colleagues, acquaintances and suspects alike are starting to get annoyed. But Adamsberg's brain is working away, and, almost without leaving his chair, he presents his confused surroundings with a solution.
The unconventional style of the inspector is mirrored by a style that seems to wander about just as aimlessly. It's hard to pin down what it is, it might even be just bad, incoherent writing, but it works well and makes Vargas' books that little bit different from other crime novels. Also, the protagonists' frequent introspection that works so well in Scandinavian crime is not limited to the inspector. There are only a handful of others, but each of them is portrayed by their thoughts and musings. This adds a light philosophical layer to the novel, so much that the solving of the case seems less and less important. Adamsberg's change of pace and ultimate move then turn into as much work for the reader as for the inspector. Finally getting somewhere feels like struggling out of an armchair that has become more comfortable by the hour.
So. If you feel like slowing down a bit and contemplating the world and the little things with Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, almost like people dropping dead left, right and centre are nothing to worry about, Fred Vargas is your new obsession. You're welcome.
The Chalk Circle Man is Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg's first appearance in Vargas' work. These days, an unconventional policeman is pretty much the standard in any novel of the genre, but Vargas doesn't only make her hero a shabby-looking, mind-numbingly slow policeman who needs to walk around in circles in order to arrive at a conclusion, she mirrors these qualities in her writing. Having read any of her novels I could get my hands on, rather than going through them in a civilized, chronological manner, I knew what to expect. For a new reader, Vargas' style, as much as her inspector's, might be an adventure. A naturally fast reader, I always find myself hurrying through the text, often without grasping every detail, just because I'm waiting for something to happen. There isn't much action in an Adamsberg case. It's gripping, and pleasantly bizarre in a French way, but the really interesting part is seeing Adamsberg's mind at work.
In this case, the good people of Paris are somewhere between amused and bemused when blue chalk circles start to appear on the sidewalks overnight, each of them drawn around a random object. No case for the police, but Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is worried and decides to keep an eye on things. Soon, the object in the circle is a dead body, and Adamsberg... well, doesn't really do anything. For most of the time he thinks, and colleagues, acquaintances and suspects alike are starting to get annoyed. But Adamsberg's brain is working away, and, almost without leaving his chair, he presents his confused surroundings with a solution.
The unconventional style of the inspector is mirrored by a style that seems to wander about just as aimlessly. It's hard to pin down what it is, it might even be just bad, incoherent writing, but it works well and makes Vargas' books that little bit different from other crime novels. Also, the protagonists' frequent introspection that works so well in Scandinavian crime is not limited to the inspector. There are only a handful of others, but each of them is portrayed by their thoughts and musings. This adds a light philosophical layer to the novel, so much that the solving of the case seems less and less important. Adamsberg's change of pace and ultimate move then turn into as much work for the reader as for the inspector. Finally getting somewhere feels like struggling out of an armchair that has become more comfortable by the hour.
So. If you feel like slowing down a bit and contemplating the world and the little things with Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, almost like people dropping dead left, right and centre are nothing to worry about, Fred Vargas is your new obsession. You're welcome.
Cannonball Read 4!
I'm going for 26 books this year (cranky baby excuse bla bla), AND I will actually review all of them. Also, I'll stay away from Les Miserables, which brought me to a complete standstill last year. So then.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
CBR-III #18: Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities
I am one of those people who spend too much time feeling accomplished for reading a lot of the classics. I do like most of them and have come back for the more obscure ones, but man do I love being able to tick more and more boxes in all those literature questionnaires (I also love questionnaires way too much).
But maybe I'm not doing myself and Charles Dickens justice. I loved Bleak House and found David Copperfield interesting enough to finish it within a week. More importantly, those books taught me a lot about Victorian novels: Sometimes, you have to skim in order to keep your sanity. When Dickens goes on a spiritual rant, I turn the page. Sometimes I lose track of the story, because Dickens actually has a point in his rants. He wrote enormous amounts of enormous novels and mastered the art of never being too obvious. Quite often, this makes it hard for the reader to get the gist of the story, and I'm not entirely sure I have this problem because Victorian English is still foreign to me. Dickens was just so good that he could afford to play around with language.
The setting of A Tale of Two Cities is an unfamiliar one at first: It takes us further back than to the good old Vitorian days - more precisely, to the days of the French revolution. The scope of the novel seems breathtaking; Dickens proposes to paint a picture of both France and England in those days, of a whole time (the famous "best of times and worst of times"). He accomplishes it, while managing to take the reader in by focussing on a small number of characters. Alexandre Manette, a French Doctor, is released from the Bastille after years of captivity, and reunited with his daughter Lucie, who lives in England. Manette is traumatized but slowly brought back to life by Lucie's love and the support of his few friends (Dickens is only too happy to supply suitably sentimental descriptions). Lucie falls in love with another Frenchman in exile, the dashing Charles Darnay, who turns out to be an aristrocrat on the run from his family's bad deeds towards the enslaved peasantry. In an attempt to save a loyal servant who is caught up in the tumult of the revolution, Darnay travels to Paris and is promptly arrested. His family's attempts to rescue him form the last, and most exciting part of the novel.
Apart from his usual sentimental description of young love, old loyalty and pure goodness of heart, Dickens excels in capturing the mood of France in the years of the revolution. He describes the suffering of the people without the usual sentimentality, and caricatures the aristocracy with a good amount of bile, while at the same time condemning the senseless slaughter in the name of the young Republic. I found it hard at first to unite those two viewpoints, in that silly, polar way of thinking that makes sane, balanced literature a necessity. I eventually realised there is no simple right or wrong, even in Victorian literature. Dickens makes it clear that while he thinks both extremes wrong, a bloody revolution as this was neccessary for France to make a complete fresh start with new, better rules, laws and conditions.
As for the story, nobody really wins. While on the surface level there is the expected happy ending, the overall mood is one of despair and loss. The long-term effects of the revolution are yet to come, and we leave Paris in a hurried, panicked way. As far as Dickens goes, this is strong, dark stuff that goes beyond the description of individual fate. Not what I expected, but all the better for it.
But maybe I'm not doing myself and Charles Dickens justice. I loved Bleak House and found David Copperfield interesting enough to finish it within a week. More importantly, those books taught me a lot about Victorian novels: Sometimes, you have to skim in order to keep your sanity. When Dickens goes on a spiritual rant, I turn the page. Sometimes I lose track of the story, because Dickens actually has a point in his rants. He wrote enormous amounts of enormous novels and mastered the art of never being too obvious. Quite often, this makes it hard for the reader to get the gist of the story, and I'm not entirely sure I have this problem because Victorian English is still foreign to me. Dickens was just so good that he could afford to play around with language.
The setting of A Tale of Two Cities is an unfamiliar one at first: It takes us further back than to the good old Vitorian days - more precisely, to the days of the French revolution. The scope of the novel seems breathtaking; Dickens proposes to paint a picture of both France and England in those days, of a whole time (the famous "best of times and worst of times"). He accomplishes it, while managing to take the reader in by focussing on a small number of characters. Alexandre Manette, a French Doctor, is released from the Bastille after years of captivity, and reunited with his daughter Lucie, who lives in England. Manette is traumatized but slowly brought back to life by Lucie's love and the support of his few friends (Dickens is only too happy to supply suitably sentimental descriptions). Lucie falls in love with another Frenchman in exile, the dashing Charles Darnay, who turns out to be an aristrocrat on the run from his family's bad deeds towards the enslaved peasantry. In an attempt to save a loyal servant who is caught up in the tumult of the revolution, Darnay travels to Paris and is promptly arrested. His family's attempts to rescue him form the last, and most exciting part of the novel.
Apart from his usual sentimental description of young love, old loyalty and pure goodness of heart, Dickens excels in capturing the mood of France in the years of the revolution. He describes the suffering of the people without the usual sentimentality, and caricatures the aristocracy with a good amount of bile, while at the same time condemning the senseless slaughter in the name of the young Republic. I found it hard at first to unite those two viewpoints, in that silly, polar way of thinking that makes sane, balanced literature a necessity. I eventually realised there is no simple right or wrong, even in Victorian literature. Dickens makes it clear that while he thinks both extremes wrong, a bloody revolution as this was neccessary for France to make a complete fresh start with new, better rules, laws and conditions.
As for the story, nobody really wins. While on the surface level there is the expected happy ending, the overall mood is one of despair and loss. The long-term effects of the revolution are yet to come, and we leave Paris in a hurried, panicked way. As far as Dickens goes, this is strong, dark stuff that goes beyond the description of individual fate. Not what I expected, but all the better for it.
Saturday, 12 March 2011
CBR-III #16: John Irving: Last Night in Twisted River
In his afterword, John Irving describes himself as a sort of literary relic, one of the unfashionable few who still believe in plot. He mentions the novels that have influenced him, and from that alone, I should have known I'd love Last Night in Twisted River. It's massive (more than 650 pages long), and it's epic, and I love epic novels so much that I started taking the thickest books from the library shelves at random. In this case, knowing Irving's writing - although A Prayer for Owen Meany did not appeal to me on an emotional level - helped, but the fact that this book can not be read in one sitting was the main point.
The novel spans more than fifty years, beginning in a small New Hampshire logging settlement in 1954. Daniel Baciagalupo, at twelve years old, is an insecure, jumpy boy, living with his father Dominic, the settlement's cook, in a rough, and for the most part lawless, world. Accidents are common, and the boy has already lost his mother to the dangers of the place. Everyone in Twisted River is damaged in some way, is either crippled, bereaved, dangerously alcoholic, or morbidly obese. Within the first few sentences, the boy's 15-year-old friend dies. Yet there is comfort in the routine the boy shares with his father and their friend Ketchum. Stories of accidents, bear killings and violence mix with Daniel's memories of his mother and the story of her death, which he wants to be told again and again. One night, confusing the ficticious and the real world, Daniel accidentally kills the sheriff's girlfriend, and the cook and his son flee from Twisted River, knowing the constable will forgive neither the man nor the boy.
Both Daniel and Dominic manage to settle for years before the sheriff tracks them down, each time upsetting the tentative lives they have managed to build for themselves, causing them to lose friends and loved ones over and over again. Informed and warned by their old friend Ketchum, who remains in Twisted River, they live with the constant threat of the sheriff's violent revenge. Consequently, there is not much happiness in their lives. While they both encounter quite a few women, there is little love in their relationships. Most women in the book are inconsequential, and if they're not, they're almost comically oversized, mean or mad. Daniel becomes a writer, dedicating his life to re-imagining the darkest moments and biggest fears of his past. The reader soon realises just how similar Daniel's life and fiction are, although the people close to him always notice a curious detachment. It soon becomes clear that an ageing Daniel has still to write his own story. (And once again, metafiction rears its ugly head...)
As a writer, Daniel offers some insight into the art of fiction writing: "So called real people are never as complete as wholly imagined characters". Nevertheless, Irving's style made it difficult for me to fully imagine the characters in the book. It may be because of the meandering plot, which is mixed with lenghthy descriptions of the logging process, recipes and hunting trips, which can make the plot hard to follow. Also, the novel is in parts curiously devoid of feeling. Events are described rather than felt, and some characters seem rather cold and lifeless.
Make no mistake though: Last Night in Twisted River is a very good novel, one that stays with you and makes you ponder life, fate and, in part, politics. It's beautifully written, and the fact that I can write a lengthy review about it after a series of short, inconsequential books that left me with nothing to say surely proves its worth.
The novel spans more than fifty years, beginning in a small New Hampshire logging settlement in 1954. Daniel Baciagalupo, at twelve years old, is an insecure, jumpy boy, living with his father Dominic, the settlement's cook, in a rough, and for the most part lawless, world. Accidents are common, and the boy has already lost his mother to the dangers of the place. Everyone in Twisted River is damaged in some way, is either crippled, bereaved, dangerously alcoholic, or morbidly obese. Within the first few sentences, the boy's 15-year-old friend dies. Yet there is comfort in the routine the boy shares with his father and their friend Ketchum. Stories of accidents, bear killings and violence mix with Daniel's memories of his mother and the story of her death, which he wants to be told again and again. One night, confusing the ficticious and the real world, Daniel accidentally kills the sheriff's girlfriend, and the cook and his son flee from Twisted River, knowing the constable will forgive neither the man nor the boy.
Both Daniel and Dominic manage to settle for years before the sheriff tracks them down, each time upsetting the tentative lives they have managed to build for themselves, causing them to lose friends and loved ones over and over again. Informed and warned by their old friend Ketchum, who remains in Twisted River, they live with the constant threat of the sheriff's violent revenge. Consequently, there is not much happiness in their lives. While they both encounter quite a few women, there is little love in their relationships. Most women in the book are inconsequential, and if they're not, they're almost comically oversized, mean or mad. Daniel becomes a writer, dedicating his life to re-imagining the darkest moments and biggest fears of his past. The reader soon realises just how similar Daniel's life and fiction are, although the people close to him always notice a curious detachment. It soon becomes clear that an ageing Daniel has still to write his own story. (And once again, metafiction rears its ugly head...)
As a writer, Daniel offers some insight into the art of fiction writing: "So called real people are never as complete as wholly imagined characters". Nevertheless, Irving's style made it difficult for me to fully imagine the characters in the book. It may be because of the meandering plot, which is mixed with lenghthy descriptions of the logging process, recipes and hunting trips, which can make the plot hard to follow. Also, the novel is in parts curiously devoid of feeling. Events are described rather than felt, and some characters seem rather cold and lifeless.
Make no mistake though: Last Night in Twisted River is a very good novel, one that stays with you and makes you ponder life, fate and, in part, politics. It's beautifully written, and the fact that I can write a lengthy review about it after a series of short, inconsequential books that left me with nothing to say surely proves its worth.
Friday, 18 February 2011
CBR-III #10: Lorena McCourtney: Invisible (Ivy Malone Mystery Series #1)
This was a free book for the kindle. There is too much God in it. Nuff said.
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Sunday, 6 February 2011
CBR-III #8: A.M. Homes: This Book Will Save Your Life
Ok. So somebody introduces himself to the hero and says "I'm Nic."
How does the narration know that Nic spells his name without the "k"? Wouldn't the hero put him down as an ordinary "Nick", by default? The book is clearly written as a third-person narration, so wouldn't it have to put the default "Nick" down first before, if ever, correcting it to a "Nic"? Wouldn't it make much more sense to have Nic himself specify the peculiar writing of his name?
Yes. This really is the most pressing question I have about this book.
How does the narration know that Nic spells his name without the "k"? Wouldn't the hero put him down as an ordinary "Nick", by default? The book is clearly written as a third-person narration, so wouldn't it have to put the default "Nick" down first before, if ever, correcting it to a "Nic"? Wouldn't it make much more sense to have Nic himself specify the peculiar writing of his name?
Yes. This really is the most pressing question I have about this book.
Sunday, 30 January 2011
CBR-III #7: Markus Zusak: The Book Thief
The word "bestseller" does not usually make me want to read a book any more desperately. Likewise, the more people recommend a book to me, the more I expect to be, if anything, disappointed. That may not make me a particularly open-minded reader, but sometimes, I give books a try just to prove to myself that I will at least read them before I slag them off.
The Book Thief did not appeal to me at all. The sleeve notes are disjointed, just like the first few pages, and books about books? I recall the hate-fest that was my Firmin review. I'm not one for metafictional, narrated-by-death magical realism novels. But I gave it a go.
The Book Thief is the story of Liesel, a young German girl who grows up with foster parents in a poor suburb of Munich during WWII. She sees her brother die and her mother disappear before the story has even properly begun, and during the course of the novel, she is confronted by all the things that make the 1940s such a desperate time for most of the world. Perpetually hungry, she is forced to steal food, but she longs for one thing even more: Books. Superficially, it's the story of how she acquires a handful of books. But in the small world she inhabits, the big questions that the horror of the Nazi regime and its war bring crop up. When her parents hide Max, a Jewish refugee, in the basement of their little house, Liesel befriends him, all the while living with the sense of fear and helplessness that such a situation would bring on any family trying to stay under the Nazi radar. Max furthers Liesels love for words, but also teaches her their destructive power. In the end, it is, as always, death who has the last word.
For most of the first half of the book, I was reading mechanically and didn't think much of the book. I didn't like its style, which was to precious for my taste, too obviously looking for sympathy by mimicking the confused girl's trains of thought and perception of the world. The story itself didn't strike me as particularly clever or special, it was the context that gave it its strength. Any novel about life in Nazi Germany, however, smacks of set books in secondary school (I HATED The Reader.) In fact, a quick look at the book's Amazon page furthered my suspicions that the book might be meant for young adults.
Towards the end, though, I felt more and more drawn in by the story. The style got better, or maybe I got used to it, and some passages were really moving in their simplicity and inherent sadness. Liesel's story is a sad one, and the book doesn't try to come up with a big dramatic ending. I didn't cry, but I can see how people might.
All in all, The Book Thief will not become one of my favourite books, but it will stay with me for a while, which is more than can be said for other books. I suppose that makes it better than I thought it would be.
The Book Thief did not appeal to me at all. The sleeve notes are disjointed, just like the first few pages, and books about books? I recall the hate-fest that was my Firmin review. I'm not one for metafictional, narrated-by-death magical realism novels. But I gave it a go.
The Book Thief is the story of Liesel, a young German girl who grows up with foster parents in a poor suburb of Munich during WWII. She sees her brother die and her mother disappear before the story has even properly begun, and during the course of the novel, she is confronted by all the things that make the 1940s such a desperate time for most of the world. Perpetually hungry, she is forced to steal food, but she longs for one thing even more: Books. Superficially, it's the story of how she acquires a handful of books. But in the small world she inhabits, the big questions that the horror of the Nazi regime and its war bring crop up. When her parents hide Max, a Jewish refugee, in the basement of their little house, Liesel befriends him, all the while living with the sense of fear and helplessness that such a situation would bring on any family trying to stay under the Nazi radar. Max furthers Liesels love for words, but also teaches her their destructive power. In the end, it is, as always, death who has the last word.
For most of the first half of the book, I was reading mechanically and didn't think much of the book. I didn't like its style, which was to precious for my taste, too obviously looking for sympathy by mimicking the confused girl's trains of thought and perception of the world. The story itself didn't strike me as particularly clever or special, it was the context that gave it its strength. Any novel about life in Nazi Germany, however, smacks of set books in secondary school (I HATED The Reader.) In fact, a quick look at the book's Amazon page furthered my suspicions that the book might be meant for young adults.
Towards the end, though, I felt more and more drawn in by the story. The style got better, or maybe I got used to it, and some passages were really moving in their simplicity and inherent sadness. Liesel's story is a sad one, and the book doesn't try to come up with a big dramatic ending. I didn't cry, but I can see how people might.
All in all, The Book Thief will not become one of my favourite books, but it will stay with me for a while, which is more than can be said for other books. I suppose that makes it better than I thought it would be.
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