The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany before & during WWII. It describes Liesel Meminger’s relationship with her foster parents, Hans & Rosa, & the other residents of their neighborhood, & a Jewish fist-fighter who hides in their home.
The story is told from the point of view of Death who finds Liesel Meminger interesting as she brushes Death three times in her life.
This is a very big book - over 500 pages.
However it didn't need to be this long.
It's a good story but poorly told - the book is a bit of a mess. Many sections of it do not work.
The narrator often spoils the story by telling us things ahead of time. This is supposed to wet our appetities and/or to prepare us for hard news, but it is largely irritating.
It makes me suspect that the story - if told chronologically - would add up to nothing - and so the narrator has to play around with chronology in order to keep our interest.
The ending is a let down - what happened to Max? We know he reunites with Liesel but do they become a couple? Do they marry and resettle in Austrialia - or does Liesel find another partner later on?
But most of all the book angered me because it is another story of passive jews during the holocaust.
They either hide out like rats or they suffer mistreatment like rats.
Where is the defiance? Where is the fight-back.
Were the Jews really so passive and spineless?
I think of Gandhi's passive resistance to the British rule and I see bravery, defiance, resistance.
I think of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement and and I see bravery, defiance, resistance.
I think of the enslaved Africans in the American South and the Caribbean and I see bravery, defiance, resistance.
Are there really no stories of bravery, defiance, resistance when it comes to the Jews of the 1930s/40s? Is this why the Jews of Israel are so antagonistic towards the Palestinians? Did the lack of bravery, defiance, resistance, for all those years, turn them into savage, brutal oppressors?
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