The Book Thief

Translated into 63 languages. 17,000,000 copies sold worldwide. Adapted into a successful film.

And here’s me come to say I didn’t like it.

Actually, that’s not all the way true. I did admire the portrait of ‘ordinary’ Germans caught up in the chaos and hate of a Nazi-infested world. I could feel the cold and the damp of the winter scenes. And I liked the fact the whole book is narrated, in a totally detached yet sympathetic voice, by Death. 

(Unlike the film, which gives the whole story a rather treacly, Spielbergian positive gloss, the book is at pains to point out that no matter how good and well-intentioned you may be, death’s going to get you anyway. It’s relentlessly un-sentimental.)

But oh boy, does it take a long time to tell this story. 535 pages, broken up into chunks of text that read a little like a TV programme interrupted every five minutes by commercials. And here’s the thing for me: written in a style that can’t stop saying, ‘ Wow! Look at how great I’m writing!’

I’ve talked with people who don’t mind this at all. And who don’t agree with me. Fair enough. But when I come across a sentence such as, ‘A patch of voice escaped his mouth,’ or, ‘Fingermarks clutched the book’, or, ‘Her nerves licked her palms,’ I’m thrown right out of the story by writing that calls such attention to itself. 

But, 63 languages and 17,000,000 copies. It’s obvious I'm in a minority. Ho hum!