I found that to be true for in the space of just two days I have devoured all pages. Not that it started that way. Death, the narrator, is sardonic and, at times, extremely flippant and it takes a while to get used to his style.
The irony of the name is sweet β Himmelstrasse β Heaven Street. It is a street which serves as a microcosm of German society of the time, a society which is anything but heavenly, a society in which ordinary working-class Germans hope to remain, if not untouched, then at least undamaged by the monstrous regime which has enveloped them.
Her brother dies on the journey and at his burial she steals a book she finds lying in the cemetery. But it is all she has. Her stepfather Hans reads it to her during the nights she is haunted by nightmares and thus teaches her to read.
Her second book is purloined from the remnants of a book-burning. Thus is the pattern set. Throughout the Nazi period Liesel continues to steal books for she needs the words to provide stability and sense in a world which descends to madness, as people soak up and follow through on the rhetoric and propaganda of the Nazi regime.
For there are those who strive to retain an element of humanity and swim against the tide β even if secretly and futilely. Nonetheless these people are the commonplace heroes of the tale and their acts of courage and humanity are enough to prevent the novel and the reader from succumbing to nihilistic despair.
