“You of all boys should know that Man is the Storytelling Animal, and that in stories are his identity, his meaning, and his lifeblood. Do rats tell tales? Do porpoises have narrative purposes? Do elephants ele-phantasize? You know as well as I do that they do not. Man alone burns with books.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (NOV 18, 2010)

What a father Salman Rushdie would make! Imagine being read to from a book that opens with “a boy named Luka who had two pets, a bear named Dog and a dog named Bear.” And then to learn that the former “was an expert dancer, able to get up onto his hind legs and perform with subtlety and grace the waltz, the polka, the rhumba, the wah-watusi, and the twist, as well as dances from nearer home, the pounding bhangra, the twirling ghoomar (for which he wore a wide mirror-worked skirt), the warrior dances known as the spaw and the thang-ta, and the peacock dance of the south.” For Rushdie is a wizard with words, taking us in a sentence from ordinary to exotic and back again. This is a book for children to hear with wonder and for adults to understand, for Rushdie’s range of reference (and fondness for erudite puns) is immense.

Luka Khalifa is the much younger brother of the title character in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Rushdie’s earlier fantasy for the child in all of us. His father, the great storyteller, the Shah of Blah, is in a coma and Luka must journey into the Magic World to steal the Fire of Life before his being is sucked away by the spectral Nobodaddy, who becomes more and more visible as he empties the dying man of his substance. The quest involves the assistance of elephant-headed Memory Birds, a shape-changing dragon called Nuthog, and the benevolent but fierce-speaking Insultana of Ott, who provides a magic carpet to take Luka much of the way to his destination. But Luka is no shrinking violet himself. He started the whole chain of events by cursing a cruel circus-owner so effectively that the animals revolted, and he can hold his own in a battle of riddles with a terminator-blasting Old Man of the River, or in a rigged trial presided over by the god Ra, who speaks only in Egyptian hieroglyphics. This is not a book to read in a single sitting; the point is less the journey than the encounters along the way, each chapter having its own atmosphere and treasure-trove of wonders.

Here, for a quieter interlude, is part of Rushdie’s description of the Lake of Wisdom: “Shining schools of little cannyfish could be seen below the surface, as well as the brightly colored smartipans, and the duller, deepwater shrewds. Flying low over the water’s surface were the hunter birds, the large pelican-billed scholarias and the bald, bearded, long-beaked guroos. Long tendrils of the lake-floor plant called sagacity were visible waving in the depths. Luka recognized the Lake’s little groups of islands, too, the Theories with their wild, improbable growths, the tangled forests and ivory towers of the Philosophisles, and the bare Facts. In the distance was what Luka had longer to behold, the Torrent of Words, the miracle of miracles, the grand waterfall that tumbled down from the clouds and linked the World of Magic to the Moon of the Great Story Sea above,”

I don’t know if I was simply in a more receptive mood, or if it is actually the better book, but I enjoyed this a great deal more than its predecessor. I remember thinking that HAROUN suffered from being too close to a video game such as Mario Brothers, but here the connection is quite explicit and oddly enough it works even better. Luka is a modern boy, quite at home in the electronic world; he is hardly surprised to find a life-counter in the top left-hand corner of his vision, and he knows which objects to punch to replenish his store. The modernity helps to anchor the book, to bring the vaguely Indian setting closer to home — as does the fact that Rushdie is no longer confined to his own mythology, but freely references Greek, Norse, Japanese, and other cultures as well. Indeed this is the point: in a modern world, where the old deities no longer wield their power, stories are the only means of giving them life. As Luka explains to the dilapidated deities in their broken-down pan-cultural Olympus: “Listen to me: its only through Stories that you can get out into the Real world and have some sort of power again. When your story is well told, people believe in you; not in the way they used to believe, not in a worshipping way, but in the way people believe in stories — happily, excitedly, wishing they wouldn’t end.” He might have been describing his own book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 63 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House; 1 edition (November 16, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Salman Rushdie Wikipedia page on Salman Rushdie
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Enchantress of Florence Shalimar the Clown

Bibliography:

• Grimus (1975)
• Midnight’s Children (1981) 
• Shame (1983)
• The Satanic Verses (1988) 
• East, West: Stories (1994)
• The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995)
• The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
• Fury (2001)
• Shalimar the Clown (September 2005)
• The Enchantress of Florence (May 2008)

Children (of all ages):

• Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)
• Luka and the Fire of Life (2010)

Other:

• The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey (1987)
• Imaginary Homelands (1991)
• The Wizard of Oz (1992)
• Conversations with Salman Rushdie (2000)
• Step Across the Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (2002)
• Joseph Anton: A Memoir (September 2012)

“…But what I really mean is Poor us. All three of us have had terrible things happen – murder, cancer, abandonment – and for the first time I’m tempted to tell Robbie about Rachel. It’s not sympathy I want but the credibility that comes with having faced and lived through something tragic. I can say that I understand, and I do, but to Robbie and Alice – who know nothing of my past – my words would sound hollow……I say nothing.”

Book Review:

Review by Maggie Hill (JUL 30, 2010)

It is important to set the parameters, or the standards, of a Young Adult novel right up front when reviewing one in a public forum. The Young Adult novel is a genre that allows authors to explore edgy content within the typical bathos of teen self-consciousness. If a novel is to be successful in this market, it must ambitiously try to underscore topics such as murder, sickness, abuse, heroin addiction, suicide, sexuality – pretty much any topic with an “edge” – and have a central character that is either surrounded by the subject, or is going to potentially be lost to the subject. Take Romeo & Juliet, minus out the words of William Shakespeare, put it in first person narrative form – let’s let Romeo be the narrator – and you will be soundly situated in a Young Adult novel.

In general, these novels tend to be action-oriented, filled with personal drama, and focused almost exclusively on a difficulty that one character experiences. Because the genre’s goal is to dramatize a topic and render an ultimate (usually, moral) denouement, chapters are generally short and can read like scenes from a television show or play. Good examples of this genre make liberal use of dialogue, realistic setting, and character archetypes (i.e. the mean girl, the bad boy, the messed-up-by-sadness protagonist).

All of this is by way of introducing Beautiful Malice, a YA novel by first-time author Rebecca James. The novel centers around, and is told by, a high school student who has been a witness to, and victim of, her sister’s murder. On the heels of this tragedy, she relocates to another town and takes a new name. There, she keeps to herself and keeps her secrets and self-blame safe. Until she meets the larger-than-life, beautiful, magnetic Alice, who befriends her. Alice makes Katherine, the narrator, her best friend. Although Katherine is striving to just be unnoticed and live a quiet last year of high school, Alice’s friendship spins her into a web of psychological torture as only a teenage girl can experience it.

The topic of this novel is murder; specifically, the repercussions of a terribly normal mistake suddenly crashing into someone else’s malicious intent. Thrown into the mix is promiscuity, teen pregnancy, mistrust of adults, and a world in which teenagers must find their own way. It’s a page turner.

This novel is a successful YA novel for all the reasons mentioned above. For an adult, there are limits to what we will accept as drama. However, for the audience that this novel seeks, it deserves to be noticed and read.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 17 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bantam (July 13, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Maggie Hill
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Rebecca James
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More YA: Lucy by Laurence Gonzales Twilight by Stephanie Meyers Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Bibliography:

• Beautiful Malice (July 2010)

“There were so many things I wanted to see and do in my lifetime, but how many of them were within my reach?”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (JUL 16, 2010)

In the baking hot Texas summer of 1899, Harry, the oldest of eleven-year-old Calpurnia Tate’s six brothers gives her a notebook in which she begins to write down her observations of nature. She also longs to get her hands on Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, but the local librarian says it’s barely fit for adults, let alone a child. Calpurnia’s mother is busy riding herd over her seven active offspring and running the house, while her father oversees their cotton acreage and the mill. Neither parent nor all the brothers seem to have a scientific bone in their bodies. In the Tate family, Darwin’s note that “the child often reverts in certain characters to its grandfather’ seems on the money: Calpurnia’s granddaddy is a rather remote man who retired from commerce years ago to take up the pursuits of a naturalist. One day he comes across his granddaughter making her notes, and they begin exploring their mutual interest together. The old man mentors her, even opening one of his locked cabinets to haul out his copy of the book she so wants to read.

But Callie Vee, as most call her, is a girl born in times when women were expected to get married, have families, and run homes. Few and far between were those who had already bucked the conventions of the time. Calpurnia has the quiet, steady influence of her grandfather to encourage her love of science and nature, but her mother, especially, thinks it is time for her to really start applying herself to learning domestic skills. So her opportunities to roam the land and be in her granddaddy’s makeshift lab are sometimes curtailed by the order to learn knitting, needlepoint, and cooking. Captain Tate (her grandfather) tells her how one day, rather late in his life, he discovered the pull toward learning more of the world. Callie Vee has felt the same pull, much earlier in her life. But both of them know that no matter when such a desire for knowledge is discovered, it should be heeded. The old man, late as it was, did so. But Calpurnia is not sure she will be able to. As the new century approaches, she wonders whether her ambitions are within her reach.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is a lovely invitation into a rural America just on the cusp of instituting sweeping changes such as the telephone and automobiles. Jacqueline Kelly creates the details of Calpurnia’s life so engagingly; and Calpurnia herself is, refreshingly, not a spoiled, insolent child (too often depicted in books). She is conscientious, sensitive, and caring, yet possessed of a definite will of her own. Her oldest and her youngest brothers arguably make the greatest impressions among boys, and her mother is more of an influence than her often absent or in-the-background father. And, of course, there is her granddaddy who can’t seem to keep the boys straight, but whose heart Calpurnia wins over.

This is a novel that doesn’t offer completely outrageous adventures or an unbearably suspenseful denouement, although it certainly contains both amusing and heart-tugging episodes. It reminds me of Caddie Woodlawn and similar novels of that genre. It is simply a wonderful story of a girl’s ripening awareness of her inquisitive nature and the possible limits into which she’s been born. Highly recommended to both young and old.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 57 readers
PUBLISHER:	Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); 1 edition (May 12, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jaqueline Kelly
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larson

Bibliography:

• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (March 2009)

“Sometimes it seemed to Jenny that they were almost human. In graduate school in 1987 she had gone to work with the largest population of bonobos in captivity at the Milwaukee Zoo. They were among the last of the great apes. The first time Jenny had locked eyes with the dominant female at the zoo, she knew that she was looking at a creature who was far more like her than unlike her.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (JUL 15, 2010)

Laurence Gonzales begins Lucy in the Congo, where Jenny Lowe, an American primatologist with a PhD in anthropology, is studying bonobos in their native habitat. She abruptly flees her hut when the insurgents resume their fighting, and makes her way to the camp of David Stone, a British researcher. Sadly, the revolutionaries had already been there, leaving one survivor, fourteen-year-old Lucy. Jenny takes Lucy back home to Chicago, not realizing that they are about to embark on a long and agonizing journey. For Lucy is no ordinary teenager; she is a genetic human-animal hybrid, created from the DNA of her father, David Stone, and a bonobo. Although Lucy looks like any other girl, she is highly educated (she can recite poetry by heart and speaks five or six languages), uncannily perceptive, and has the ability to communicate with animals.

Lucy enrolls in high school, but unsurprisingly, has difficulty fitting in with her peers. When Jenny discovers the shocking truth about Lucy’s origins, she worries about the girl’s future. If intolerant individuals were to become aware of Lucy’s genetic history, how would they react? Gonzales has a field day exploring the ways in which Lucy and Jenny’s lives become progressively more complicated. As the challenges mount, the two depend on their allies for emotional support. Among them are Harry Prendeville, a doctor, who has been in love with Jenny for years; Amanda Mather, a mature and caring classmate who takes Lucy under her wing; Ruth Randall, a wealthy woman whose heart goes out to Lucy; and Jenny’s friend, Donna W. Feather, who has worked with bonobos at the Milwaukee Zoo for more than twenty years.

Lucy is beautiful, exotic, highly intelligent, and sensitive. She appreciates Jenny and Amanda’s kindness, although she misses her father and the life that they once led. There are some light-hearted moments, as well. Lucy watches a soap opera for the first time and interprets the strange goings-on from a unique perspective; she interrupts a wrestling match and easily throws one of the participants across the room; Lucy learns “teen-speak” to replace the stilted vocabulary that she learned from her father.

The novel falters, however, when Gonzales introduces clichéd villains who are eager to experiment on Lucy, lock her up, or exterminate her. These sadistic goons are straight out of central casting. In fact, most of the characters in Lucy are either completely benevolent or reprehensible. In addition, throughout the novel, Gonzales hammers home not-too-subtle points about the tendency of human beings to be unenlightened, materialistic, wasteful, bigoted, cruel, violent, and out of touch with their environment. The uneven writing style runs the gamut from eloquent to prosaic. Gonzales is most effective when he describes Lucy’s attempts to elude her vicious pursuers; her flight from persecution generates a fair share of suspense and excitement. Another plus is the author’s imaginative, satisfying, and touching conclusion. The ideal audience for this book would be adolescent girls, who would identify with Lucy and admire her spunk, decency, and determination to triumph over adversity.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 84 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (July 13, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Laurence Gonzales
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another interesting teen girl: WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer For well-researched, well-plotted Chimpanzee book: Captivity by Debbie Lee Wesselmann

Bibliography:

• Lucy (July 2010)

Non-Fiction:

• The Still Point: Essays (1989)
• One Zero Charlie: Adventures in Grass Roots Aviation (1993)
• The Hero’s Apprentice: Essay (1994)
• Deep Survival: True Stories of Miraculous Endurance and Sudden Death (2003)
• Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things (2008)

“It might well be riskier to reveal much of anything to one’s parents, burdened as they were by the course of their own imperfect lives and likely to react to secrets or confessions with the usual defenses: scornful dismissal or a panicky, fawning appeal to a ridiculous army of experts.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (JUL 15, 2010)

Scan the young adults or teen sections of pretty much any bookstore and you will find an overwhelming percentage of fiction devoted to the vampire segment or to fairy tale romances. In that sense, Jean Christophe-Valtat’s slim novel 03, is a welcome breath of fresh air.

Told through the voice of a high school narrator in the French town of Montperilleux, it captures the emotional rootlessness of the teen years brilliantly. The story revolves around the narrator’s interest in a fellow teenager, a girl who is mentally handicapped and who therefore travels to a special school on the outskirts of town. Even if the narrator is gifted and his mental faculties way ahead of the girl’s, he finds many similarities between himself and the girl. “I was like her, an overprotected schoolchild in a town where nothing at all could plausibly have distracted me from my records and books for any length of time,” he says.

At one point in the story, he admits he is too unsure as to how to even approach the object of his desire. “As far as feelings were concerned, I too was slightly deficient,” the narrator points out.

In pointing out these similarities, the French author drives home the point that even the brightest of teenagers can be quite lost and adrift.

It is evident that the narrator has figured out the rules of the adult world however, and learned how to play their game. “My intelligence is carefully crafted to satisfy all the demands of my teachers, right down to the essential touch of originality that would set me apart,” he says. These are the hints of giftedness in the narrator’s voice. Of course this could also be classified as an adult author’s cynical take on the matter but it’s easy to overlook that angle in the wonderful 03.

It is also touching to see that while the narrator has almost figured out how to work the grownups around him and to play their game, he is still unsure and bumbling when it comes to interactions with his peers. After all he has none of the attention-getting trappings so coveted by teens—nice clothes or, even better, a fancy car.

03 doesn’t really have much of a story but as the book progresses you can see the narrator make peace with the fact that his friend will remain forever trapped in her mind and body while he will move on. This realization is beautifully done.

American readers might wince at the generous use of the word “retarded” in the prose. The prose itself is rendered as one long paragraph over 90-odd pages. This form too might make the material less accessible to some.

Nevertheless those who persevere will be richly rewarded. 03 is a beautiful reflection on the bewildering complexities of the teen years. Teenagers (and adults who have all been there) will find the narrator’s voice to be a mirror of their own. It’s especially heartening to see Christophe-Valtat prove that you don’t need vampires or werewolves to speak to your audience. As his wonderful novel shows, a teen’s everyday insecurities are scary enough.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (June 22, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Jean-Christophe Valtat
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another different teen years story: The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To by DC Pierson

Bibliography:

• Exes (1997)
• Album: Stories (2002)
• 03: A Novel (June 2010)
• Aurorarama (August 2010)

“I had learned that the representation was not the real thing, but in a way this dissonance was what made it so good: the distance between the map and the territory allowed us breathing room to figure out where we stood.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Poornima Apte (JUL 05, 2009)

Twelve-year-old Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet—T.S. for short—is as quirky as his name suggests. Extraordinarily gifted, his one way of making sense of the world around him, is to map it all out. So it is that Reif Larsen’s debut, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, has many of these maps and diagrams on the margins—a glimpse into the workings of a gifted mind. Worth mentioning are maps describing the locations of McDonalds in a Midwestern town, the many physical forces acting on a rodeo cowboy and the long list of random names picked by an IBM 1401 for the soda, Tab.

As the story opens, T.S. lives in a ranch house located just north of Divide, Montana with his farmer father and his scientist mother. The boy has a mentor in Dr. Terrence Yorn, a professor of entomology at Montana State, who encourages Spivet and even submits his work to the Smithsonian for a special award. Not knowing that all the insightful work has been produced by a 12-year-old, the Smithsonian grants Spivet the award and invites him to D.C. to deliver the attendant keynote lecture.

After much back and forth, Spivet decides he will bite and take the bait. He will travel to D.C. especially because lately, he believes he doesn’t really belong in small-town Montana. So T.S. travels hobo style, hitching rides on freight cars and somehow managing to make it all the way to the nation’s capital.

T.S. is a kid plagued by many worries. For someone who is used to mapping out the world in definite, objective terms, many things don’t make sense—his parents’ marriage, for example, is one that he can’t quite figure out. “These were two creatures cut from entirely different cloths…How could these two be drawn to each other?” Larsen writes. Even as Spivet articulates these questions, he desperately wants the marriage to be alive and well.

T.S. also worries about his mother, whom he refers to as Dr. Clair. He is afraid that in her blind search for the tiger monk beetle, she has let her career slip by. In other words she has become a “stenpock.” Spivet coins this word—fashioned after one of his school teachers—for “any adult who insists on staying within the confines of his or her job title and harbors no passion for the offbeat or the incredible.”

Finally there is the one that nags at him the most—T.S. Believes that he is somehow responsible for the accidental death of his brother, Layton, in a shooting accident on the ranch. The weight of all these comes out quite often as in here: “I wanted to hold her (his mother’s) hand and apologize for taking this book, for leaving without asking her permission, for not saving Layton, for not being a better brother, or ranch hand, or scientist’s assistant. For not being a better son.”

These worries slowly play themselves out during the course of the book as T.S. finds some answers in a diary he steals from his mother’s desk just as he leaves.

Once T.S. reaches D.C. the initial thrall is soon gone when he realizes he is sought after only as a publicity machine for the advancement of the Smithsonian’s cause. “You may be the ideal instrument to draw us plenty of attention and get people all jazzed up about the Smithy again,” an official there tells him. Spivet, as it turns out, has the perfect “trident : Grief. Youth. Science.”

Author Reif Larsen has created an engaging personality in T.S. and his debut effort is very commendable. The novel is not without its faults though. For one thing, the turning points in the story depend almost on only one action—the fact that T.S. brings his mother’s diary along for the ride. There are a couple more storyline pivots that seem too forced and therefore undercut the narrative. Then there’s the slight problem that the story itself is not that complex. That Spivet would have had to travel all the way to D.C. just to realize that all that glitters is not gold, seems a bit of a drag. Even the book’s novel concept (with its many sidebars and diagrams) seems to fade after a while. Because of the sidebars, the book is also physically wider than most hardcovers so it is a little physically unwieldy.

All in all though, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is a promising debut. There is no doubt that Reif Larsen is exceptionally talented—he is surely not a “stenpock.” With a touch more work on narrative, Larsen could come out with an even stronger read the next time around. And I’ll be there when he does.

The book’s major triumph is T.S. Spivet. Larsen gives his protagonist an endearing and original voice and portrays him with all his adolescent vulnerabilities. It is really hard not to fall in love with this bright and engaging companion. In the end, T.S. Spivet makes the long ride from Montana to Washington D.C. well worth the price of admission.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 31 readers
PUBLISHER:	Penguin Press HC, The (May 5, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AMAZON PAGE:	The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (fun site!)
EXTRAS:	Excerpt      Also, open above link for Amazon and scroll down for sample artwork.
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	This reminds me of:      Wolf Boy by Evan Kuhlman Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlman

Bibliography:

• The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (May 2009)

“There were certainly some rounds to be made that year, from Poland to Russia to Africa and back again. You might argue that I made the rounds no matter what year it is, but sometimes the human race likes to crank things up a little. They increase the production of bodies and their escaping souls. A few bombs usually do the trick. Or some gas chambers, or the chitchat of far away guns. If none of that finishes proceedings, it at least strips people of their living arrangements, and I witness the homeless everywhere. They often come after me as I wander through the streets of molested cities. They beg me to take them with me, not realizing I am too busy as it is. ‘Your time will come,’ I convince them, and I try not to look back. At times, I wish I could say something like, ‘Don’t you see, I’ve already got enough on my plate?’ but I never do. I complain internally as I go about my work, and some years, the souls and bodies don’t add up, they multiply.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Jana L. Perskie Name (MAY 19, 2009)

The Book Thief is one of the best novels that I have read.  Author Markus Zusak’s storyline is both sad and wonderful, as it deals with Germany during WWII and the Holocaust. His memorable characters have tremendous depth, and the plot is extremely original. However, what makes this book so extraordinary is the author’s writing, which, at times, is more poetry than prose. I frequently found myself reading passages of the elegantly written narrative aloud.

Appropriately for the times, Death is our narrator and a major character. Death, the “gatherer of souls,” writes of himself, “I do not carry a sickle or scythe. I only wear a hooded black robe when it’s cold. And I don’t have those skull-like facial features you seem to enjoy pinning on me from a distance. You want to know what I really look like? I’ll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue.” In the Prologue, Death states, “Here is a small fact: you are going to die. Does that worry you? I urge you – don’t be afraid. I’m nothing if not fair.” The figure describes himself as amiable, even affable, but warns, “don’t ask me to be nice. ‘Nice’ has nothing to do with me.”

When the novel begins, Death is gearing up for mass production. It is 1939 and WWII has just begun. By 1945 the entire world will be at war. And it is Death who comments on man’s inhumanity to man, almost without emotion, in as objective a manner as possible. This inhumanity will cause it/him to work 24/7 in various places in the world at once. That’s what I call multi-tasking.

Nine year-old Liesel Meminger is our protagonist, “the book thief,” although when we meet her, she is unschooled and cannot read very well. Liesel, her little brother Werner, and their mother are on a train to Munich. All three are skinny and pale, with sores on their lips. It is on the train that Death comes to claim young Werner’s soul. Liesel and her mother despair. The boy is buried near the city, and one of the gravediggers, an apprentice, drops a black book as he walks away in the freezing winter weather. Liesel picks up the book, without calling out to notify the gravedigger of his loss. The book is titled, in silver letters, “The Gravedigger’s Handbook.” It is the first book she steals. So much has been taken from her, the grieving child feels like she settles part of the score when she commits the theft. In Munich the girl’s mother bids her good-bye and turns her over to a foster care woman. The mother disappears, never to be seen again.

Liesel and the woman make their way to a small town, Molching, on the outskirts of Munich, close to the Dachau death camp. They stop at a small house on Himmel Street, where her new foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, await the little girl. Hans is a kind and loving man who quickly takes to Liesel and visa versa. Rosa is also basically kind, although she puts up a front as a shrewish loudmouth. She is a laundress by trade and Hans is a house painter who loves to play the accordion. He is not a member of the Nazi Party. When he realizes he is losing customers because of his lack of enthusiasm for Hitler and the Nazis, he tries to join but his papers are on permanent hold. Their two children are grown and live away from home.

Liesel has terrible nightmares and occasionally wets the bed. Hans, hearing her late night screams, sits with her and comforts her, sometimes until dawn. Occasionally he plays the accordion for her until Rosa yells at him to “shut up!” The empathetic, kindly man and the traumatized little girl form a close bond and Hans begins to teach Liesel to read, especially as she is fascinated by words. She believes that words have great power, after all, Hitler didn’t need guns to persuade the German people to follow him and to hate Jews. He used words.

When she begins school and the teacher realizes that the girl can’t read, she is placed in a class with younger children. Most humiliating. It is during one of Liesel’s frequent nightmares, that Hans begins to teach her to read. Since the Hubers have no books of their own, Hans uses Liesel’s “The Gravedigger’s Handbook” as a teaching tool. Then another book, a copy of “Mein Kampf,” is acquired, one of the few available books which have not been burned. And yet another book, “The Shoulder Shrug,” which Liesel snatches from a pile of burning books, is added to her collection. “Germans loved to burn things. Shops, synagogues, Reichstags, houses, personal items, books and of course, people.”

Eventually, Liesel acclimates to her new home and makes friends, especially with Rudy, the boy next door and her biggest fan. She never overcomes her nightmares, however, nor does she ever forget her mother and brother. It is at this time when she is forced to join Hitler Youth.

Then Max Vandenberg, a German Jew in hiding, comes to ask Hans to fulfill a promise he made to his father, a comrade in arms who saved Hans’ life during WWI. A Jew seeking refuge…what to do? Hans, an honorable man, feels obligated to keep his promise, even though it would mean death for Rosa and himself if Max were discovered in their home. Liesel is sworn to secrecy. The Hubers take the man in and set up living quarters for him in the basement. Max becomes part of the family and forms a close friendship with Liesel. She becomes his eyes and ears to the outside world. He eventually writes a book for her, “The Standover Man” – a simple, illustrated and haunting book about what it is like to be born Jewish in Hitler’s Germany.

Life goes on. Liesel learns to read and steals more books – fourteen in all. She and her friends adventure. Germany declares war on Russia. Death’s work increases, especially on the eastern front and in the concentration camps. He/it feels overwhelmed by the souls to collect from the camps, gas chambers, battlefields, and causalities from air-raid bombings. Max begins to do crossword puzzles in the old newspapers Liesel occasionally finds for him. Rosa’s and Han’s workload diminishes significantly. Times are tough, rationing is strict, and people don’t have money to send out their laundry or to have their houses painted. And, of course, Hans carries the stigma of not belonging to the Party. I don’t want to include any spoilers, so I will stop my summary here.

This is a powerful novel that kept me riveted throughout. As I wrote above, I sometimes stopped to read parts of the prose aloud. There is humor here also. One needs comic relief when reading a novel about such a heinous period in mankind’s history.

Markus Zusak’s parents grew up in Nazi Germany and Austria. He frequently thought of writing about the things his parents had seen during the war. He says he thought about the “importance of words in that time, and what they were able to make people believe and do.”

Appropriately, the novel’s last words belong to Death: “A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR: I am haunted by humans.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 573 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf Books for Young Readers (September 11, 2007)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perskie
AMAZON PAGE:	The Book Thief
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Markus Zusak
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Try: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

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