Is reading a form of reincarnation? What exactly goes into it? Good writing? Good reading? Both? I wonder how many lives I've lived within mine? Some books just touch you that way, and unfortunately--others don't.
I finished listening to 'The Book Theif' in the car today, and as I was driving about going from errand to errand I had tears streaming down my face (and looking quite pathetic...I'm sure).
Death narrates this Natzi Germany tale (and this might just be a put off for many readers...you warm to him and his spare worded narration...eventually) of a young girl who lost her communistic parents and was sent to a foster home in a working class neighborhood of Munich. Her foster parents, while maternally gruff and paternally kind, love her as their own, although rarely hear it in her mother's acidic tongue. Through the book, Liesl steals several books at opportune moments and death, while he warns himself away, gets caught up in the understated drama of Leisl's typically hard, cold life during wartime. The end is bittersweet and left me hanging, wondering a crucial question... of matramony and life.
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3 comments:
So, how old is this girl and how old would be the person who read it? It seems like we have read many books about WWII and the depression since this class began. Interestingly enough, I had never before read any. Thanks for sharing. I'm sorry/glad you cried.
She is 11 or so at the beginning of the story and the book ends with her dying at a very old age.
Wow! That first paragraph is enchanting, poignant, and .... well, just brilliant! It's one of those pieces of writing that I have to read again and again.... and still can't explain why it means so much to me! Wow!
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