In 2005, Markus Zusak released his magnum opus, The Book Thief. An old friend that knew I loved reading but knew that I wasn't a big fan of the high-concept, science fiction and/or fantasy young adult novels of the modern day. This book, The Book Thief, was a modern work of historical fiction, and its unconventional narrative is set during the Holocaust. I was initially deterred from reading it upon learning that it was set during the Holocaust, simply because the dealings during the Holocaust deeply disturb me. Finally, the summer after she got it for me, I gave it a read. It took me three or four days to complete the book from front to back, and I can honestly say it changed the way that I viewed literature.
The Book Thief is written highly unconventional. Interestingly, it's more so the story of a poor little girl's self-journey with the Holocaust being the backdrop. Only a single plot point in the entire novel directly relates to the Holocaust, and it's nothing thrilling or highly consequential. The plot takes place in Germany, and focuses on a group of characters of which none are Jewish people. The most interesting twist to the novel? It's told from the perspective of death.
So, who tells this story? In school, we were educated on the different types of narrators (first-person, third-person limited, omniscient, etc), but technically, is the story told in the first person since it is told by a narrator who has a role in the story? As death? Death is portrayed in the story as being human. Don't worry. There's no intricate backstory or side-plot involving death. Death has simply taken an interest in the little girl's story, and the way it reacts to normal people's thoughts, emotions, and actions during the Holocaust is truly mesmerizing. This is simply another example of the narrative being entirely unconventional.
Another matter of anti-tradition is writing. As a writer, I often find myself unintentionally falling back on structural cliches. "As I pulled into the dimly lit drive way and the hard rain was glistening on my window," or some other cliched manner of relating human emotion to the environment and the happening world around us, Zusak gives Death, the narrator, many quirks. Rather than use intricate employment of language to emphasize particular words and phrases, there are literally spots in the book in which a break in the text and a bracket interrupts that will reveal a particular word or phrase that is to be remembered. Because of this, the reader doesn't have to worry about letting the pretty language tell them a story. The story itself is straightforward. It's the story going on behind the curtains that the reader must infer. Because less time is devoted to the subtlety of the story, the reader is given intel into something much deeper going on in these characters. After all, any historical event of such intense magnitude cannot be conveyed on a human level without telling the story of a singular person living life against its backdrop.
Read The Book Thief to more closely understand what every pretentious reader proclaims to be art. If you're not looking to dive into a six or seven book series with tales of dystopia, wars fought with lasers and swords, and a bunch of angsty, beautiful teenagers fighting for causes, but you also don't want to immediately dive into the literary classics like Moby Dick or Huckleberry Finn, check out the unconventional masterpiece that is The Book Thief.
