The Book Thief: Book Review by Abhiram Singireddy

Plot: The 550-page, World War II-era novel, described by Death, tells the story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken at age 9 to live with a foster family in a German working-class neighborhood. Liesel arrives having just stolen her first book, "The Gravediggers Handbook" --- I'll be the starting of a cherish undertaking with books.

I found the author's approach to the story to be quite poor. The primary and preeminent contrivance is that the story is described by Death. The choice of storyteller includes completely nothing to the story; it is as it were a diversion to the peruser, and it moreover energized the creator to include commonplace perceptions almost Death's viewpoint that include nothing to the story. On the off chance that Death had been given a created identity or a special viewpoint, at that point possibly the choice of the storyteller would have worked.  The other scheme I found most distracting is the repeated use of little newsflash-type, bold, and centered notes that appear periodically through the story to add dramatic effect. These newsflashes were irritating and served only to break up the natural narrative flow without adding anything significant. This is an example of the author hitting the reader over the head with his points, rather than trusting his own writing to get the message across. I think good Holocaust stories need to be told, but the Book Thief fails at that endeavor. The story is trite; the narrative is sentimental and uninspired.  I recommend that you look elsewhere for something better. There's plenty of other books out there that do a much better job such as Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. I would rate this book a 5/10, primarily because I could see what they were trying to make out of this book.