Review: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

It kills me, sometimes, how people die.
--Death

This is an unusual review for me. Normally, I like to let a book settle a bit, think about what I want to say and give my opinions time to come together. I finished The Book Thief only 9 hours ago. By the time I got through the last CD I was a sniffling, sobbing mess. It has been a long time since I was so moved by a book and I woke up with the urge to write about it.

Leisel Meminger is the book thief of the title and the story is narrated by Death. Death's voice is interesting - he has some degree of omniscience, as he is able to tell everyone's story in great detail. He sees enormous suffering but is always a bit apart from it, although he is sometimes touched by individual stories, as in Leisel's case; the thought that even Death is moved by the enormous loss of life in a war is somehow comforting. He talks about the difficulties of his job and the frustrations of dealing with his "boss" in a way that is so familiar that you sometimes forget what sort of job he's doing.

The story takes place in Nazi Germany during World War II. Leisel has lost her family and is placed with Hans and Rosa Hubermann as a foster child. She brings with her her first stolen book - The Gravedigger's Handbook - and there are many more to come. Hans uses it to teach Leisel to read and stealing books becomes an important part of her life.

Words are very important in this book and they are vividly described. They have weight, taste, color and texture. They drop from people's mouths, they march across the room, they are like living creatures, whether they are spoken aloud or hidden in the heart. Max, the Jewish refugee hiding in their basement, explains their importance in the story he writes, The Word Shaker.

Death's narration is full of details, definitions and interesting tidbits. He goes far beyond foreshadowing and often tells you important details - who is going to die and how - but each event is still exquisitely painful. The advance knowledge does not soften the blow, as Death hopes, but instead infuses the story with a sort of melancholy, knowing how soon the end will come. As I said, I was deeply moved by this book and these characters. It has been some time since I felt so swept up in a story.

I'm glad that I picked this up as an audio book. I don't speak any German, and the reader, Allan Corduner, does a fabulous job. His accent sounds authentic, the pronounciations are smooth and not stilted, his voices are clear and distinct. The book is well-suited to an audio adaptation; after all, it is Death telling a story.

The Book Thief was originally published in Australia for adults, although it has been marketed in the US as Young Adult fiction. The story of how the book took shape is an interesting one, as it is based on stories that Zusak was told as a child.

This book is easily in my top 5 for 2008. It is a moving story that gets my highest recommendation. Order yours at Amazon.com.

Happy Hour is for Amateurs: A Lost Decade in the World's Worst Profession by Philadelphia Lawyer

I try to find something good to say about every one of the books I review. There is usually a story, a turn of phrase, a plotline that intrigues me, so I can provide a little something positive. Not so here. The book should be titled Another Chapter, Another Hangover.

In the first 50 pages of the book, Lawyer managers to misplace a large amount of mescaline, get drunk with an old college buddy before vandalizing their former fraternity house, and describe multiple instances of crude and demeaning sex (in vivid and occasionally disgusting detail) with a variety of partners who are chosen strictly for their convenience. I worked my way through the early chapters telling myself he's in college - lots of people are like this in college; it will get better. It didn't. He went from being a drunken, irresponsible grad student to being a drunken, irresponsible attorney. There is no message here. There are no truths about the law, there's not even much humor, just the not-so-surprising revelation that working for a law firm is just like working for any other business. The stories about drunken parties aren't even fun or funny - he seems to be having a fairly miserable time of it.

I also have to say that this book, as a friend of mine would say, does not pass the smell test. He claims he blew off classes, didn't clerk or work any sort of legal job and "didn't bother to buy the books" for his last two years of law school, yet he managed to graduate, get a job in private practice and pass the bar? According to my friends who have Been There, Done That this scenario is highly unlikely. He claims to be billing 180+ hours a month at a law firm, but spends all his time surfing internet porn and emailing his buddies dirty jokes. Impossible, at least according to friends who have some experience of the legal billing treadmill. His descriptions of his friends all seem the same: linebacker huge, with access to massive amounts of drugs and alcohol, vicious and destructive when drunk/high/etc and liable to smash your furniture, wreck your car or break your arm while in a narcotic haze. Exaggeration, at the very least.

The Philadelphia Lawyer is one of the latest blog writers to become an author. It can be done well; I have been reading Belle de Jour for ages (which should tell you I am not being prudish about his x-rated stories), and that has spawned 2 books (which I own and enjoyed) and a series on Showtime. This guy should have stuck to blog posts and dirty emails. Give this one a pass.

Creepers by David Morrell

I have a certain fascination with old buildings, run-down hotels, abandoned factories. There are dozens of websites that show me I am not alone in this. (Check out Opacity: Urban Ruins for some fabulous photos.) So the idea of infiltrating a famous old hotel, closed up since the 1960's, was really intriguing. Sadly, the book just didn't live up to expectations.

First, the reader: Competent, but not able to produce a range of voices; in some scenes, even the small differentiation he gives them becomes muddled and confused. Although I have to give him credit - he did a fairly amusing New Jersey accent.

Second, the dialogue: Stilted and unrealistic. It's difficult to convey a lot of historical background data without sounding like you're reading from a textbook. Here, the Professor leads the expedition and every member of the team sounds like they're reciting last night's reading assignment. In addition, New Jersey thugs don't suddenly start screaming "Lord, help us!" when they're attacked. They shout things that you can't type in a family blog. It comes off sounding amateurish.

Third, the story: Every time Frank Balenger opens his mouth, the story gets more far-fetched. No point in posting spoilers - you wouldn't believe them anyway.

Duma Key, by Stephen King

This is the best thing I've read from Stephen King in years. Nothing he's written since The Green Mile kept me as consistently interested and engaged. (Cell was close, but possibly because I liked the idea of all those folks walking along, jabbering on their phones, being slaughtered in one fell swoop; I'm mean that way.) The early King books just grabbed you and held on until they'd wrung the life out of you, and this book had the same holding power. Duma Key kept me on edge for 18 cds, it kept me sitting in my office parking lot, counting the minutes until I had to go into the office; it kept me sitting in my driveway, listening, watching the cat sit in the window and wonder why I wouldn't come in to feed her. That is no small accomplishment.

Edgar Freemantle has a terrible accident (described in vivid detail). He loses his right arm, suffers a traumatic brain injury and his life is turned upside down. He suffers from bouts of rage and memory loss, his marriage falls apart and on the advice of his therapist, he moves across the country from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast of Florida. He takes up drawing - an old college hobby - and slowly begins to heal. He makes friends: Jack, the college student who runs errands and helps him around the house. Jerome Wireman, a marvelous character who cares for the island's only other resident, Elizabeth Eastlake - wealthy, eccentric, ancient and in failing health. She's also a key to the mystery that unfolds.

Edgar's sketches and paintings have power - both wonderful and terrible. It takes Edgar and Wireman some time to begin to understand that power and the other forces at work on the island. Isn't that always the way with a King story? There are other forces at work, things we don't fully understand, pushing us along in their path. And that's all I plan to say about the story. It is so much more fun to discover it on your own. One of the things that King does especially well, one of the things I love about his books, is the half-knowing that you have; you go forward, knowing what's coming next, dreading it, hoping that there's something else. I mean, when you read Pet Semetary, from the moment he tells the story of the Indian burial ground, didn't you just KNOW what was going to happen? You didn't know who and you didn't know when, but you knew what. In this story you know the paintings have power, you know Edgar is going to use that power - even if he doesn't completely understand it - and you know there will be terrible consequences. But you can't stop reading it.

The characters in this book are fabulous. Wireman in particular is wonderful; you want to sit on the sand and have a glass of green tea, listen to him patter on in pidgen Spanish about nothing and everything. Dr. Kamen - the descriptions are so clear that you can picture his bulk and dark skin and hear his resonant voice. The child's voice that narrates part of the story is clear and distinctive and compelling. And the storytelling? No one tells a ghost story quite like Stephen King, and this book is a return to all the things I loved about his early work. This is a book I'll definitely be recommending to friends.

You can order your copy of Duma Key on Amazon.com.

The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter

I love Angela Carter’s writing. The stories in this collection are full of atmosphere – dark and moody, sensual, sometimes playful. Here, she takes an assortment of fairy tales and reworks them with a ‘sexier’ and more ‘feminist’ slant.

If you know your fairy tales, that might be very effective. Personally, I thought her retelling of Puss-in-Boots was adorable, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember enough about the original to know what she had changed. Sadly, that was the case for a lot of these stories – I don’t recall ever reading a fable about The Erl-King or Wolf-Alice, and I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out whether I knew the stories from somewhere or not.

“The Tiger’s Bride” was probably my favorite story – the atmosphere is incredibly vivid, the young woman determined to keep her dignity and The Beast a character full of charm and mystery. I also loved “The Company of Wolves” – earlier, I was enchanted by the movie that was based on this story. And I was familiar enough with the story of Bluebeard and his unfortunate wives to cheer the great improvement in that story’s ending.

I was a little puzzled by how some of these changes could be characterized as “feminist.” It’s pretty clear in “Puss-in-Boots” when the lady in the tower conspires with the gentleman and his cat to free herself of an unpleasant husband and take control of her own affairs. But in ‘The Bloody Chamber’, the young wife marries for money and, after being discovered n the forbidden chamber, goes quietly to her doom. And “The Snow Child”? I found that positively creepy…and not in a good way.

Certainly not fairy tales you’ll be reading to your children, but all in all an excellent bedtime read…as long as you aren’t prone to nightmares.

20th Century Ghosts, by Joe Hill

In the introduction to this book, Christopher Golden says of the author: Joe Hill is one stealthy bastard. Indeed he is. This is a nice assortment of stories - some obviously horror, some strange and disturbing, some rather sweet. The title piece read more like a love story than a ghost story. "Best New Horror" makes me think a bit about what it would be like to drop by and visit Ed Gein and family. "Bobby Conroy Comes Back From The Dead" is bizarre and funny, while "My Father's Mask" is just bizarre. All in all, a good collection and it ends on a very high note, with one of my favorite stories in the book, "Voluntary Commitment."

In "Voluntary Commitment", Nolan is a fairly typical teenager, maybe a bit of a screw-up, with some shady friends and a very odd younger brother. Morris is a strange little boy in a world of his own, building Dixie cup towers and marvelous cardboard forts in the family's basement. The story has that feeling of dread about it - you know something bad is going to happen, you're pretty sure you know how it's going to happen, you're just waiting for the axe to fall. I worried about Morris; he seemed awfully vulnerable, you always are when no one really understands you. And the ending is what you were afraid it was going to be, what you knew it was going to be, all along.

My favorite story of the bunch was "Pop Art", a story about a kid whose best friend in high school was an inflatable boy. Yes, inflatable - it's one of those weird genetic things that skips a generation. The way everyone just seems to accept this, the practical difficulties of being inflated, the way Art is terrorized by the local bullies (easy when every thumb tack is a potential lethal weapon) ...maybe I just have a soft spot for vulnerable boys. It also contains perhaps my favorite line in the whole book: "I'm sorry, but realistically, what are the odds you're going to get beat up by the grand champion of the spelling bee?"

"You Will Hear The Locust Sing" is a great metaphor for boys growing up - all of a sudden you're a whole new creature and none of your parts will do what you tell them to and even if you want to go back, you can't. "The Black Phone" and "Abraham's Boys" are first-rate scary stuff. I enjoyed each and every one.

There is one detail that is very carefully not mentioned - not in the author biography, not in the acknowledgments, not anywhere - so I won't spoil this bit of mystery by mentioning it here. After all, if you can look at the picture on the back of the book and not see the resemblence...well, there's no help for you.

And one more thing - you've surely had friends tell you recently that when you go to the theater to see Iron Man or one of a handful of other current movies, be sure you stay to the end - all the way to the end. You don't want to miss the last, hidden treat at the very end of the film, after the credits. The same admonition applies here. Don't miss it.

What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman

A woman is found wandering along the side of the road, dazed and confused, after a hit and run accident. She tells the police officer at the scene that she is one of the "Bethany girls", two sisters who disappeared from a shopping mall almost 30 years earlier. But that is virtually all she'll tell them - she used to be Heather Bethany. She won't give them any information about the name she's using now, where she's living, who kidnapped her, or what she's been doing for the past 30 years.

Let me say first that I enjoyed this book immensely. I found the story compelling and the mystery plays out very well. Heather gives out information in dribs and drabs, enough to make you want to believe her, but little enough that you wonder if she has the whole story. Some of the tidbits she gives up are impossible to confirm; if they were true, they might prove her story without a shadow of a doubt, but there is no way to know for certain. I like a mystery that engages me and prompts me to spin out alternate scenarios, propose different solutions and wonder what is coming next. In this case, I had figured out a key piece of the story fairly early on, but I had no idea what to do with this information. Definitely a sign of a good mystery.

But (and you knew there would be a "but") this book requires a tremendous suspension of disbelief. This woman causes an accident that leaves people hospitalized, leaves the scene, tells some improbable story about being a missing kidnap victim...and the police let her go? She refuses to give them a name, she's driving what appears to be a stolen car, she has no ID and refuses to provide any proof of the kidnapping story, but they are reluctant to keep her in jail, even overnight? I found that impossible to believe. Not quite enough to throw me out of the story entirely, but it was a near thing.

The main character, Heather, is almost completely unlikable. That's usually a bad sign for a book, but in this case it works. You know that if the story she's telling is true (and you find yourself wanting to believe it is), then she has been through hell and she's entitled to a few eccentricities. If it isn't - and there is certainly evidence that she might be a very talented con artist - then you really want to see her get what's coming to her. All in all, a satisfying and interesting story.

One side note: Perhaps this is a bit of Baltimore slang I've not come across before, but the thing that threatened to pull me out of the story more than anything else was Lippman's use of "police" as a singular noun, as in "I'm a police" rather than "I'm a police officer." The main detective on the case doesn't say he's a homicide detective, he says he's a murder police; the retired investigator who worked the original kidnapping says he used to be a police. It was incredibly jarring - as if she had used an improper verb tense throughout the book. I found myself mentally correcting this bit of local slang as I was reading, but it made my inner grammar maven itch every time I saw it. I don't think something in a novel has ever annoyed me enough to prompt me to write the author about it, but this did. If I get a response, I'll pass it along.

Winterwood, by Patrick McCabe

Let me start off by saying this: I strongly, strongly recommend getting this as an audiobook. Unless you can read it with a variety of strong Irish accents in your head, pronounce the Celtic placenames and sing in Gaelic, you are really missing out. Gerry O'Brien does a fabulous job and his work really adds to the story.

This is an onion of a story - layers and layers, each revealing a little more of the truth. The story tells a bit, then circles back to tell a bit more and each time, the story becomes more horrifying. What appears at first to be the story of a happily married man returning to write an article about his childhood home becomes a multi-generational story of lies, abuse and murder.

Redmond Hatch starts out with stories of his idyllic marriage - they are perfectly happy in all ways. A short time later, when he revisits this and tells a bit more of the story, there are more ominous tones: "It is never a good thing to raise your hand to your wife." As the story circles around and more is revealed, it is clear that this is a very disturbed man who had a very unhappy marriage, even if he doesn't remember it that way.

Early on you think you know who's who and what's what, but I guarantee that as the story unravels your whole perspective will change. Some changes are pretty clearly telegraphed, others caught me by surprise. There is a bit of the mystical in the story, which I've often found in Irish stories, and it's left to the reader to decide what is real and what is the product of a disturbed mind.

Bee Season, by Myla Goldberg

I'll admit that the deciding factor in buying this book was the photo of the author, Myla Goldberg, on the back cover. I took one look at her big glasses, chunky shoes and Pippi Longstocking tights and thought, "oh, I definitely want to read what she has to say!" And I was not disappointed.

Eliza has never been the standout in her family. Her mother, Miriam, is a successful lawyer, her brother, Aaron, is a prodigy and her father is fully invested in making sure her brother becomes a rabbi. Eliza is in the class for slow learners and no one expects much of her. When she wins the school spelling bee, she doesn't even bother to tell anyone.

I positively ached for Aaron, reading this book. He was the focus of his father's attention, the apple of his eye, daddy's little prodigy. Suddenly, that is ripped away from him as his father focuses on Eliza's budding talent, leaving him bereft. It should come as no surprise that he begins to search for something to fill that void, someone to focus their attention on him, someplace to belong when he feels like an outcast in his own home.

As Eliza racks up more spelling bee wins, the balance in the family begins to change and everyone must reevaluate their role. Her brother certainly begins to re-think his plan to become a rabbi. His father shifts his spotlight entirely onto his suddenly-brilliant daughter. And as is so often the case, the biggest changes in the family come from out of left field, as Miriam's secrets cause the family to remake itself yet again.

Victorine, by Catherine Texier

Victorine, a young married woman with two children, leaves an unhappy marriage and escapes to Indochina with her childhood sweetheart. They build a life there in the hot, humid weather, exotic flowers and swirls of opium smoke. Then, after 10 years, she goes back to France, back to her husband. She starts out planning to finally end things with him - ask for a divorce, explain things to her children - but she stays, has another child, lives out her life. I absolutely loved this first section of the book. Her descriptions of Indochina - the country, the people, the difficulties of adjusting to the climate and the language - are marvelous.

Spoilers ahead...

The frustrating thing about the book is that 95% of the story deals with her decision to leave her husband and her life in Indochina; only a small fraction at the very end deals with her return. There is no mention of how she was received by her old friends and neighbors, how she explained her absence, how she made peace - if she made peace - with her children. She and her husband had another child, but they also separated: there is virtually no explanation for that and there are no details, no explanations. She continued to see her childhood sweetheart after her marriage broke up - only a few brief paragraphs explain all of this. Although she saw him every summer from the time she and her husband separated until he died at age 62 (only 3 years before the story takes place), there is no explanation of how this started, why it continued, why they never married. If you like a story with closure and all the loose ends wrapped up, avoid this book.

When I originally wrote this review, I'd just finished the audiobook, which was an abridged version. After reviewing the full version, my main criticisms are still the same - there isn't enough of a wrap-up. I am not one to require that every detail by explained, but there were far too many holes in this one for my taste.