Review Detail

Where does one even begin with this book? Nothing I say could ever really do it justice. I guess I understand what all the fuss was about now.

Liesel is now one of my favorite heroines of all time. She's strong-willed, compassionate, and still just a girl. She cries, she makes mistakes, and she lets herself question everything she's ever known. The emotion contained in this one girl is just heartbreaking at times.

I could talk on and on about all the characters, but I'll keep things short and just say this: all the main side characters were wonderfully written and I felt some sort of affection towards them all.

Death is a fantastic narrator. He's a little odd, but really rather likable. I loved the way he cared for the humans and their souls. His storytelling is a bit disjointed, but I grew to like it.

I've never read or seen anything from the point of view of an average German in the times of World War II. It's easy enough to think of them all as one big, bad entity, but of course that's not the case. The majority of them were just normal people trying to continue on with normal lives. It hurts to know that these people could be anyone and that this truly happened to so many people.

The Nutshell: Everything I'd ever heard about the emotions of this book was true. I ended up finishing it at work and was quite the mess for the last hour or so of my day. The story may just be about a girl growing up in World War II Germany, but that's the quiet beauty of it all.

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