Death as a narrator has never been so likable and so straight-forward. In fact, he often tells you with warning and in bold exactly what is going to happen, then he paints the picture...so as not to surprise the reader too much. What he does do is the draw the reader in so entirely that soon you begin believing that you want to have a deeper conversation with death.
How could you not want to get to know a narrator who says things like:
"Allow me to play you a picture."
"Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That was the business of hiding a Jew."
"If they killed him tonight, at least he would die alive."
The novel turned out to deal with WWII, a subject I have read about far too often, and thus have put a ban on in my life for a few years, but I started it without knowing, I loved it, and I had to finish it. It doesn't glory in the bloodshed and the atrocities, it calmly depicts the life of little Liesel Meminger, a book thief. Bad dreams live in her sleep, but out of sheer luck and many footsteps she makes it.
1 comment:
This sounds really interesting. I don't think I've heard of Holocaust fiction before.
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