Divergent and The Book Thief

I don't read much YA fiction anymore, but when I do...better not go down that path, I'm starting to sound like The Most Interesting Man in the World (who, it turns out, originated in a beer commercial. I really need to watch more TV to learn such important info.) For the last year, I've been discovering the classics, with great relish, but there are a few modern novels that have managed to stick out among such august company. Two of them are about to be released as movies.

The first of these, Divergent, I remember very little about, except for liking it quite a lot at the time. So, I won't vouch for its literary quality, but I do know it holds a higher standard of morality than most dystopian fiction, including The Hunger Games (if not a comparative level of originality.)

The other, The Book Thief, was very original, though I felt the ending lacked closure. I think I might like it better as a movie than a book, though I have an instinctive dislike of child actors (excepting Christian Bale, who shoots child acting into the stratosphere). I review it here.

Longish

The Book Thief and the Power of Words

 
My mom taught me to read when I was four. Since then, I’ve had words shoveled into my head by culture, literature, and dozens of other sources. Words are my comfort, words are my song, words are my liberation. The very base of society rests on reading, on communication through little chicken scratches on thin sheets made from trees. Words are essential to our society—regardless of the fact that 14 percent of the U.S.’s population is illiterate.*

Several of my bookish friends have mentioned Markus Zusak’s book, The Book Thief—a bookish book which I booked from the library to bookishly read. There’s no doubt it’s a book that must be grappled with, but gives few answers for the many questions it raises.

The Ideas

 

Set in World War II, Liesel Meminger’s world is very bleak. Words become her way out. The first book Liesel steals becomes her link with the past, and as time goes on, the books she reads provide a way of staying sane in the insanity. Indeed, this theme is so strong as to verge on preachy. Several characters are saved by books (and an accordion), in various manners. The Fuhrer invites followers, “beckoning them with his finest, ugliest words, handpicked from his forests….Words were fed into them. Time disappeared and they now knew everything they needed to know. They were hypnotized.”