Goodreads Book Review: The Book Thief

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There's no denying that this is one hell of a beautifully-written book. There's a lyrical, poetic quality to the prose that makes it a real joy to read at times, and the story itself is incredibly moving; there were one or two times towards the end where I could feel my eyes moisten. The characters, even the background ones, are all very well developed and engrossing, too.  All that said, though, did I necessarily enjoy the book? In a word, no. While the language itself was written beautifully, I didn't like the way the book was put together almost like excerpts of different stories at times. The episodic nature of it put me off. Also, as much as I like the conceit of having Death be the narrator, I didn't enjoy many of his asides and I didn't like the way events in the book weren't just foreshadowed but where flat-out spoiled dozens... sometimes even hundreds... of pages ahead of time. At least one or two surprises would have been nice. So that's why I'm giving the book the rating it gets: while I didn't necessarily enjoy it, I appreciate the craft involved in it, so three stars seems like a fair compromise to me.



View all my reviews

Twenty-two books down now, and it's starting to feel like the challenge is really running out of steam as recommendations are coming much less frequently. If you'd like to change that, let me know! I've got two more random internet recommendations I can get started on, but I'd much prefer something more personalized, so if you've got a title, give it to me and I'll jump on it like Apache!