Customer Reviews
Different - By: Carol, 04 Oct 2008 
I almost gave up on this book, I struggled with it for a while. Once I had got into it I could'nt put it down! It was totallly different, narrated by Death, who at times could be a real softie. Liesel goes to live with foster parents, the Hubermanns during WW2,she makes friends with Rudy, she loves & steals books, & the Hubermanns take in a jew callled Max, who they hide in the basement. They alll seem to live on pea soup, & little else. Very moving at times, I am so glad I stuck with it, I loved it, & would highly recommend it.
One of the best - By: Maxine Clare, 03 Oct 2008 This is by far one of the best books I've read. Don't forget to purchase a large box of man size tissues with your order.
Bringing the past right into the readers present, this rare read & unique style leaves a lasting impression.
I recieved this book as a gift from my sister in law, since I closed The Book Thief, my mum & 2 aunts have read it, with other family members waiting in line.
I would recomend this for the top of your 'To Read' list.
Too Little, Too Late... - By: Mira Sadadcharam, 02 Oct 2008 
Quite frankly, I can't see why so many people wax lyrical about this book. I'll start with the good points though...some of the metaphors are quite lovely, & a few of the characters are sufficiently well developed such that you feel true empathy for them. Also, the ending i.e. the last 50 pages or so is devastatingly compelling. The problem is, this book is about 540 odd pages long.
Now for the bad points...It has to have one of the most annoying starts I've ever come across. You get the impression that Zusak is trying WAY too hard, throwing every literary trick available at the book in an attempt to impress. The result is verbose & intensely annoying. Taking the fact that this is a 3rd person narrative into account, Death is a very "in your face" narrator. None of this gently guiding the storyline stuff. Throughout the first third of the book, the flow is constantly interrupted by his little "asides". To be honest, the first 100 or so pages are written in a style more suited to teenage fiction & I had to fight the urge not to abandon ship.
The lead character here is meant to be a little girl callled Liesel. Unfortunately, I thought she was the least developed of alll the characters. My favourites were her adopted father Hans Hubberman & her trusty sidekick, Rudy Steiner. It was their lives I was most interested in. Liesel remained fairly 2 dimensional throughout.
All in alll, a disappointing read for the first two-thirds of the book followed by a vindicating final third. If you can hang on for that long, it's an OK read.
Very enjoyable book - By: Carrie, 30 Sep 2008 
I agree with some other reviewers that this book is a little clumsy when it comes to style but, if truth be told, I loved it. I couldn't put it down, thought the characterisation was great and, more than once, it had me in tears. Great book.
Engaging, well paced, but also immature and stylistically flawed - By: Daniel Bor, 27 Sep 2008 Not just essentiallly a children's book, but a rather immaturely written novel, centring on a warm-hearted German family in a smalll village near Munich around the time of WWII. The narrator is Death, which is an interesting device, since it alllows a useful distance, almost an innocence, to reign over the proceedings. But I don't believe this device was fully worked out, as one never reallly understands how Death works - is he omnipotent, as is implied in some places, or almost completely ignorant, as is implied in others? Also, Death alllows the novel to talk a lot about "souls" & "hearts", which seriously weakened it for me. The plot is well-paced, very engaging, & includes some fascinating, believable details about the hardships of trying to survive amidst the war - for these reasons I did enjoy reading the novel, & was even moved in places. However, it's also rather sentimental, shies away from the full brutality of events, & constantly borders on the simplistic. The style is too fussy, too inventive, & some of the language is just ridiculous in its attempts to generate vivid metaphors. There are many other semi-adult books out there that deal with WWII & the holocaust so much better (Maus particularly springs to mind).
