Books by author: Markus Zusak

After reading the insanely positive reviews on Amazon, I pitched this to my book club, and we decided to read it. I didn't really know what to expect, except that it's a novel about a young girl in Germany during the holocaust, and it has been marketed toward young adults.

I expected to like it a lot more than I did. The prose is extremely stylized, to the point where it became annoying (a few times, there would be a sentence or two that sounded like Vonnegut, but those passages were rare). The chapters are all very short with almost no momentum between them, so it was very easy to put the book down after reading for just a few minutes.

So style-wise, I didn't like it.

The substance, describing the consequences of Hitler's tyranny from the point of view of an innocent young girl, her foster parents, and the residents of the ordinary German neighborhood they live in, was much more interesting. Although I didn't enjoy most of the book, the ending was well done, and I guess it was worth it.

I'm very curious to see what the other book club members thought.