2005 book 125

Markus Zusak's The Book Thief
I'll start by saying that this book was heartbreaking--I was straight up sobbing at certain parts, as opposed to my usual tearing up a little. With that caveat, I can recommend it pretty strongly. The protagonist is a young German girl (with a penchant for stealing books) who goes to live with a foster family in a smallish town during WWII. There's the usual growing up angst, and there's Nazi angst, and there's the whole hiding a Jew in the basement angst. Normally I'm wary of stories set in Nazi Germany--it's like a cop-out of sorts, since the times are already so emotionally charged that the writer doesn't have to do as much to write a powerful story--and this book did start out a little slow, but by the end I was absolutely engaged, and like I said, sobbing. It didn't elicit the level of despair that, say, Grave of the Fireflies does, which is of course not a bad thing. I actually would re-read this book, whereas you could not pay me to ever watch that movie again. Anyway, we're going to give this one an A-, only because some of the narrative stylings annoyed me a little (Death as a narrator worked for me, but some of his little notes were just a tad over-the-top).