The Book Thief: Clever or Contrived?

Book Review: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

So many people said to me, you must read The Book Thief--it’s fantastic! But they never told me what it was about. I don’t know why I assumed it was supernatural fiction. Perhaps I was putting it into the same category as Inkheart, another book about books, where characters are viable living things. The Book Thief is nothing likeInkheart.

I’m so sorry, everybody, but I don’t want to read 500+ pages telling me how horrible it was in Nazi Germany. I’ve actually been to Auschwitz. I’ve laid my hands on the ovens, toured the facilities where they experimented on Jews, and walked through the showers. Believe me, that pretty much does the trick for a long time. I had my World War II overdose and I’m a bit too much of an empath to go back for a while. I guess it's a personal thing.

Having said that, The Book Thief is a fine book to read if you want to understand some of the daily struggles of life in Germany at that time. This book peeks into the trials of pro-Nazi Germans, anti-Nazi Germans, neutral Germans just trying to survive, and, of course, Jews (most of whom are Germans; I assume they are anti-Nazi). The characters each have a clear voice and compelling stories to tell. You really care what happens to them, even if it takes 500 pages to get there.

Sorry I keep mentioning the number of pages, but it’s a very long book. I find it hard to believe this was written for a young adult audience. Just because the main character is a kid, does that make it a book for young adults? But I digress.

Aside from the characters, the other reason to read this book is the short story contained within it, “The Standover Man.” It is sweetly written and sweetly illustrated.

A comment about the writing style--first, at times Markus Zusak tries too hard to be literary. His style feels contrived.  There is so much metaphor in the book that you get a little tired of it. Dude, just say it! Also I found the use of foreshadowing a bit excessive. Maybe the author feels he needs to do this because the audience is young adult (I’m not sure who came up with that classification), but when every other chapter ends with something like, “That was the last time she would smile--ever”--well, it gets real old. Actually, one chapter ends like this:

For now, though, let’s let him enjoy it.
We’ll give him seven months.
Then we come for him.
And oh, how we come.

Really? Do you have to end every chapter with a teaser like this? Also, I am annoyed by the excessive use of one-sentence paragraphs, but that’s just a pet peeve of mine.

I was so aware of the conspicuous use of literary devices that I had trouble getting lost in the story. Frankly, the writing seemed contrived and distracting. I would read a line like, “His fingers smelled of suitcase, metal, Mein Kampf, and survival,” or, "The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring," and then think to myself, oh he’s using figurative language again. Where was I? Oh right, I’m reading a book about a girl in Nazi Germany where Death is the narrator. See my problem?

In the Q and A with the author at the end of the book, Zusak himself comments on his use of figurative language:  "I like the idea that every page in every book can have a gem on it."  Don't be so deliberate!  If figurative language is appropriate, go ahead and use it.  But don't over-use it if it isn't necessary.

As I write this, I am not sure if people are even critical of this book, because they are so impressed by the theme of the badness of Nazi Germany, and that death is the narrator. Nevertheless I’ll take a chance. This book could have (should have) been about 100 pages shorter, or more. Remove the excessive metaphor usage, excessive foreshadowing, and sidebar comments by the narrator that don’t add to plot or character or setting. There! I feel better now. The book doesn’t seem so long and labored.

tridecalogism

tridecalogism

"Tridecalogism" is a thirteen-letter word that means "thirteen-letter word."

Leo Lesquereux, paleobotanist

I just finished the first two books of the "Midnighter" series by Scott Westerfeld. A sci-fi fantasy story targeting young adults, the source of good magic is the number 13, and good guys in the story name their weapons with tridecalogisms.

To name a few:

• blamelessness

• backscratcher

• justification

• gravitational

• lexicographer

• irresponsible

• individuality

Our heroes are highschoolers (oh, that's a tridec!). Not to give too much of the story away, they use common household objects containing metal alloys as their weapons. They wield these weapons to kill dark, evil creatures like flying panthers. Reading about kids swinging a tire iron at a leathery vulture is one thing; when that tire iron is named "Unjustifiable Deliciousness," it brings the whole scene into three dimensions.

I loved this story for the plot, the characters, the mythology--it was a fun read. But even more than that, I loved learning all these tridecalogisms. I didn't even know there was a word for that! How scintillating! Now I instinctively count the letters in long words to see if there are 13. Twelve is just so...even, and uninteresting, and disappointing.

Overzealously yours, call me--

"Bubbleheaded Serendipitous Groundbreaker"

Samuel Clemens, lexicographer

**reposted from Portable Elephants

Scarlet Begonias and Green Lantern: Rocking Out the Weeds

Recently I had the displeasure of refinancing my house.  Besides airing my dirty financial laundry to the kind loan officer, I had to repaint parts of the house to cover peeling paint.  That meant painting ALL of my fences.  Even though I have a fairly small yard, the job took several days, especially painting every little slat of the picket fence in the front yard.  I wondered if I could trick some unsuspecting kid into paying me to paint the fence himself, but no fitting candidates walked by.

After I finished painting the last slat on my front fence, I took a deep breath.  The fence looked clean and white and beautiful.  And the yard behind it?  Blecch!  Weedy grasses, clumpy dirt clods, I never pay attention to the darn thing unless I'm worried about getting fined by the city or the fire department.  If you want to know what my yard looks like, watch the t.v. show "Malcolm in the Middle" and you'll get a pretty good idea.

Anyway, my cheery, freshly painted white picket fence now made my poor neglected yard look especially retched.  I had to do something.

My yard is fairly tiny.  My house occupies about a half-sized lot, and one of the main attractions for me was that I wouldn't have much yard to take care of.  And yet--I still manage to make it look bad.  I hate grass, and grass hates me.  Walking to and from my house, I regularly shield my eyes so I won't have to see my weedy eyesore.

I wanted to fix the yard without having to take care of it.  Putting in drought-tolerant plants seemed especially good--not because I care about the environment or anything like that, but because I don't want to have to remember to water my garden.  I'm a plant killer.  Except for weeds.  Weeds love me.  Anyway, I didn't want to be reminded every day that I have the same effect on plants as a Ringwraith.

Instead of putting in a lot of plants, then, I decided to create a rock garden -- sort of an art installation.  I love huge art projects.  I hate gardening.  If I could make the garden into a huge art project, then I could stick with it and make it work.  And then ignore it because there wasn't much I could really kill.  A friend of mine called it a zen garden.  Please, there is nothing zen about this.  It's not about being in the moment, it's about avoiding weeds and dead plants in the future.

 I dug up the yard into 4x4 foot squares, sectioning them off with plastic garden barriers.

I used flexible plastic landscape edging pieces to create designs within the squares.

With this design, I used weed blocker to deter the weeds.  We'll see how that pans out.  With later sections of the installation, I used newspaper, mulch, and plastic sheeting in different combinations.

For this swirl, I used three different kinds of landscaping rock--lava, white marble, and "canyon red."

Then I added drought-tolerant plants.  Many of them are basic cactus succulents.

The ground cover is moss rose.  It's supposed to be an annual, but I'm hoping it will stick around for a while.

In this section, I used newspaper and mulch to control the weeds.

We watered the newspaper to flatten it.  I swear that's a hose.

On top of that, black mulch.

In this patchwork I used three kinds of rock.  The center square will host a manzanita bush.  I'll plant that in a couple of months, in the fall, when the weather is more permitting.  Since manzanita is a native plant, I could really ignore it and it should flourish in spite of my Ringwraith abilities.

The next square has a river of rocks flanked by scarlet begonias.  Yes, I'm talking about the Grateful Dead.

Adjacent to the "river" is a design that looks either like the Green Lantern or a Tie fighter.

I decided to go with Green Lantern.  It was hard to find green landscaping rocks.  I actually had to take a 30 mile drive to an industrial area just outside of L.A.  It was worth it!  The color of the rocks is "surf green."  The photo doesn't do it justice--it really is very green.   In the middle is a lavender bush.

By the way, I'm still working on the yard.  Creating my space in 4 foot square sections means that I only have to do a little at a time.  Here's how it looks so far.  First the swirl and checker:

And the "river lantern":

Now, please don't say that I'm gardening, because I'm NOT!  It's a huge art project, thank you very much. Getting rid of the weeds is just an added benefit.  Rocks > Weeds.

***New addition:  I added a sunburst.  The circles have moss rose--no pics now but they are beautiful bloomers.

The Dust Pan

I wrote this essay in 1997.

The Dust Pan

My husband and I spent a Saturday afternoon clearing out the clutter from our tiny house.  We collected a truckful of junk and dumped it into a corner of our yard.  What a pile of garbage we had collected:  a lamp without a fixture, a dangerously broken floor heater, a half dozen terra cotta pots, several trashbags full of clothing, and other goodies.  Well, one man’s junk is another’s merchandise.  Gint suggested that we pile our stuff into our pickup and take it to his grandmother’s house.

The dreaded Lithuanian grandmother:  four feet tall, crusty, hollow, crackly, white, and crevaced.  She is always ready to tell you what you’re doing wrong with your life.  The first time I met Grandma Pat was a week before our trip to Lithuania.  Gint and I had just met two months before, and being in one of those in-between times of my life, I invited myself along on a trip to Lithuania he had been planning for quite a while.  I felt spontaneous and free and fearless.  Then I met Grandma Pat.  As we sat in the parlor of her modest and hot apartment, she waggled a bony finger at us.  “Don’t you trust anybody while you are in Lithuania,” she said in a dusty voice.  “They’ll rob you and take you for everything you have.  Everybody in Lithuania is hungry.”

I soon learned why when she presented us with lunch: tasteless tuna sandwiches on Kaunas black bread.  I politely nibbled mine and wished I hadn’t purchased my airplane ticket the day before.

My second encounter with Grandma Pat was at Thanksgiving.  The holiday tradition in my husband’s family is for everyone to gather at her apartment.  As we entered her home I realized it was extremely hot again, and not because she had been baking turkey and pumpkin pie all day.  No, it was hot because she never opens the windows, and even on an autumn day in Los Angeles this can prove to be deadly in her second story apartment. Everyone eyed the digital thermometer on the wall as it climbed into the high 80s. 

Thanksgiving dinner was imported by Gint’s mother Jo, who prepared the meal at her own house in Mount Washington and then transported it in plastic crates to West Hollywood.  After dinner, we retired to the living room, and Grandma Pat showed us a bottle of liquor she had won in a raffle at a Lithuanian festival:  Goldschläger, an expensive spirit with flakes of gold floating in the bottle.  Grandma revealed that she was saving it for a special occasion.  Gint’s father Gene took the bottle from her and eyed the gold flakes inside.  He smile broadly and nodded, “Yes, this is a special occasion.”

           

Grandma Pat tore the bottle from his hands and said, “I didn’t mean today!”

Gene hiccupped and said, “But why?”

“It’s not an after dinner drink,” she said.  A month later at Christmas we asked about the bottle, and she shrugged and said she had given it away to someone, she couldn’t remember who.

Over the last five years, episodes like the Goldschläger incident happened infrequently, only on those days when the family gathered for the holidays.  And here it was, a bright Saturday afternoon—nothing special—and my husband wanted to drag me to Grandma Pat’s.  There was a perfectly good reason why, too.  She keeps her garage stocked with a large assortment of yard sale nuggets. Every afternoon she opens her garage door that faces the alley and sells the items to everyone and anyone interested.  She makes pennies.  I know where she gets the stuff—she wanders through the streets of West Hollywood and rummages through trashbins and cardboard boxes.  I wonder if anyone has ever bought something from her that they had thrown out years before.

And now we had more treasures to add to the garage.  Grandma’s garage is full of decapitated dolls, 8-track cassettes, velevet dog paintings, dusty books about outdoor survival, rusty toasters, someone else’s red taffeta dress, boxes of buttons, Dean Martin record albums, termite-eaten bookshelves, dozens of wicker baskets, dirty used tennis balls, an even a corroded kitchen sink.  Turn off the lights and you’re in a haunted house, cobwebs included.

Reluctantly I agreed to go to Grandma Pat’s to drop off our junk.  I recalled the last time we visited, which had been exceptionally tedious.  It started with a perusal of the family pictures.  Hours later she decided to serve lunch: boiled chicken and boiled potatoes and a boiled conversation—basic Lithuanian fare.  After the meal she patted my stomach and asked if I was pregnant—I wasn’t.  She asked, “Well, what’s wrong with you then?”

I stammered.

“Well?”  The word hung thickly in the stuffy air.  I wanted to pluck out that word and stick it in my pocket.  “What’s wrong with you?”  she asked again.

I shot my husband the please-make-her-shut-up glare.  “We have to go,” he said.  That was my last non-holiday outing to Grandma’s place.

I pleaded with my husband to let me off the hook on this one.  He didn’t need me there, I’m weak and can’t lift things, and after all I have to clean the house.  He said it would be good for me to go, we haven’t seen her in a while, and she’s getting old.  “Fine.  I’ll go.”

Grandma greeted us at her door and asked if we had eaten.  Thankfully we had.  My husband suggested that we start moving things right away since the truck was open.  So, we exited Baba Yaga’s oven upstairs and headed to the ninth level of the inferno downstairs.  As the garage door careened into its cradle on the ceiling, a cloud of dust billowed out.  I choked but decided to tough it out. This is, after all, a visit to Grandma’s.  I chanted my mantra: be nice, be nice, be nice.

Grandma Pat floated through the garage, picking up and caressing items in a way that she would never caress a human being.  With Zen focus she picked up a vase, she was in the moment, and she asked me if I wanted to take it home.  If only she could hug her grandson with the same tenderness.   “No thank you, we have plenty of vases.  But this one is lovely.”  Be nice, be nice, be nice.

She continued to offer up all sorts of items: that size 2 dress, this painting of someone I didn’t know, those measuring cups, these coffee mugs.  For some reason she didn’t remember that we had just dumped a truckload of stuff in her garage in an attempt to create some walking space on the poor cluttered floors of our cottage.  Wasn’t she paying attention?

I had thought she was finished with the inventory when she picked up one more object.  “How about this dust pan,” she said.  The bright orange dustpan gleamed as she held it up. I flashed back to our cleanup of the morning—no dustpan in sight, it would have been nice to sweep the floors.  Finally something we needed.

“Oh, we really need a dust pan,” I said.

Her eyes lit up in stark blue excitement.  “You do!” she said.  Her Parkinson’s hand shook the dust pan in my direction.  Our fingers touched.  Her skin was cold and smooth, funny but I don’t remember touching her hands before.  Her knuckles whitened as she gripped my hand.  This old lady was strong, probably from sorting through garbage.  She exposed her gappy teeth in a crusty smile.  I had become the perfect wife for her grandson.  I had accepted her dust pan.

The dust pan had become our peace pipe, and I clutched it tightly as we exchanged a rare embrace.  I lingered a moment as I held her tiny, shallow body.  Maybe she’s not so bad.  So what if she’s not warm and affectionate like my effusive Italian family.  She expressed her love differently.  She gives from her heart and her soul: she gives from her garage.