Dazzling style and sensibility, deeply marking

"The Book Thief" is a huge bestseller in the Anglo-Saxon world. This is a long book (over 600 pages), dense, poignant (it goes under Nazi Germany, with children), rich in both the style on emotion.

Liesel is left in 1940 to 10 years in "pension" in a German couple. His father was a communist and his mother knew the rest of the family would soon be chased. Liesel is poor, Liesel hungry but it is not a sordid story. It will be raised by parents of great adoption and surrounded by love. She will do as best friend a boy, Rudy, worshiping sport and fervent admirer of Jesse Owens (he will even cover black from head to toe to look like him, which embarrass the utmost family ).

At the beginning of the story, Liesel can not read or write. But she stumbled upon an abandoned book and with the help of his adopted father will try to decipher it. The reading will be the great passion of his life. Being poor but resourceful, becomes occasional book thief. No compulsion, no no no. She will steal a book (with burnings and some good gooders pretending not to see, it's pretty simple), read it, read it, read it again and again. Once she know him almost by heart, she only try to steal another.

The story of "The Book Thief" is his. It is also that of his adopted father, a goodness that will fail to lose many times. It is also of Max, a Jewish boy they hide in their cellar. And it is also the story of an entire neighborhood and its inhabitants during the 2nd World War, Germany.

The story is told by Death itself, spiritual and sensitive. It is interspersed with drawings and excerpts from books written by Max and Liesel. Each chapter is short, blending fictionalized history, historical details and great tenderness to read this novel without feeling suffocated. The final two twists (the first unexpected, the second expected) are beautifully written in a very sober words. I think I remember a long time of this novel.