السبت، 20 سبتمبر 2014

Review: The Book Thief


The Book Thief
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In my system books deserve five stars for many different reasons, some for their writing style, for their wisdom, others for giving me good feelings or making me happy. Then there are books like this one, this book is on a completely different level.

If you are thinking right now "well, here is another person who read a famous popular book and now she is going to blabber about how amazing and groundbreaking it is...." This is not the case, I went into this book with the idea that I will find it okay, like most of the over hyped books that I read after absolutely everyone has read. This idea stayed with me for the most of part one, but after that, everything changed. This book literally changed me in a way not many books have done before. Even my body could not handle it, lumps in my throat, nausea, pain in my stomach and heart. Many times, I just had to put the book down and take a break, take a few deep breaths so I could continue, sometimes I took breaks for a few hours. That is how exhausting this book is. And the strangest thing is that you can't exactly explain why, you can't tell why you became so involved and attached to these characters. It happens so suddenly and fast that you do not even know about it. The events and the character information are like a folded paper that you open bit by bit each time you open a bit you discover some piece of information.
The narration was masterful, yes it annoyed me so much when he revealed some of the events that would happen in the end of the book, sending my heart spinning into my stomach, but it was so good in building anticipation. So good that even though you sometimes know exactly what is going to happen, it does not keep you from reacting so strongly. I can honestly say that this book received the most tears I ever gave to a book, I cried while reading a book only once before, but it was nothing compared to this time. For some people it was The Fault in Our Stars or Harry Potter, both books I love deeply, but they did not receive my tears.

What amazes me also is that the writer of this book, he was not there in 1939-1945, he did not live at that time, he did not live at that place. But the way he wrote the story was as if he was there seeing it, it was crystal clear!!
This is the second World War Two book that I read, The Machine Gunners being the first, And don't get me wrong, Robert Westall's picture felt authentic and you could tell that it was a place and time that the man lived, which is true for Robert Westall. But Markus Zusak gave me an even more breathtaking picture, a picture that move me in such a profound way, and he didn't even live at that time! Now if this isn't genius story telling I don't know what is.

 I repeat again, this book is not happy, it will not make you feel good. It is heart breaking, heart wrenching, and exhausting. It has been four days since I finished this book, but I still feel a lump in my throat and a pain in my stomach, and whenever I think I've forgotten my eyes fall on the book and the pain starts again. I hope that writing these words will help me.


Note on the movie: I watched thinking it will make me sadder than the book, because I will actually be seeing the events in front of my eyes. Yes, I got the sad ending but before the ending it was such a FUN journey, I laughed so much. The movie was very well done and you should not just read the book, the movie is another beautiful experience, with many beautiful feelings to give you that differ from the book. I seriously did not expect to laugh this much when watching the movie, I was expecting to cry throughout but I didn't and to me that shows how genius the filmmakers are.

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