The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Read: 5 August, 2010

The Book Thief has many of the common elements of a World War II narrative. There are children trying to grow up, to learn, to form friendships against the backdrop of hate and cruelty. There's a Jew hiding in the basement. There's the inevitable violent end of the Nazi regime, followed by confusion and guilt. But this story is told from the perspective of Death as he encounters, again and again, a little girl by the name of Liesel Meminger.

I've noticed that books written for young adults seem to be, on average, so much better than books written for adults. They tend to be more imaginative, better written, and far more thought-provoking. The Book Thief is no exception.

Like most books written about World War II, there was no lack of horror. There were times when I had to read through tears. There were also times when I laughed out loud. I found the characters to be very compelling and I truly cared about what happened to them. The writing style was fantastic and the gimmick of having Death be the narrator, which could so easily have become absurd silliness, was actually well pulled off.

I highly recommend this book for the young adult crowd, and I think that us old fogeys would do well to read it too.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Read: 2 October, 2008

Amazing. Just, amazing. It hurt to read Atonement because I didn't want anything to change or for the characters to be hurt. But at the same time, I had to read on and find out how it would end. I had a couple late nights because I just couldn't put the book down.

The major strength is the characterisation. Even background characters were given enough detail and depth that they feel like living people. By the end of the first chapter, I felt that I knew these people, that they were my neighbours or possibly even friends.

The other major strength was in the realism of the plot. Everything that happens is set up so that the reader knows that there is no possible way that a consequence can be avoided. Yet at the same time, I found myself hoping so much that something wouldn't happen that I would almost convince myself that it couldn't, making it not only surprising but also heartbreaking when the inevitable caught up to the characters.

If pressed to find a flaw, I would say that the exposition of the second, third, and fourth parts could have used some work. McEwan seems to want to plunge his readers into a story without a map or compass, making the first couple pages of each part a confusing and difficult read as I tried to figure out who the characters are, where they are, what's going on, etc. This is acceptable at the very start of a novel, but going through it four times was three times too many. It isn't terribly difficult to answer the whos, whats, and wheres in an interesting way and it would certainly help to ease the transition into each portion. As it stood, the start of Part Two had me put the book down until I had the courage to go through all the work of figuring out where the story was. By Part Three, I was more accustomed to McEwan's trick, so I stuck it through. By Part Four, it was still unpleasant, but I was so close to the end and I just had to find out what happened to everyone.

It's a fairly quick read, but not a superficial one. Be prepared to devote all your attention to Atonement until the final page is reached. I highly recommend it to anyone, regardless of their interests (though if you love psychology, writing, or history, especially World War II, that would be a bonus).