The Book Thief - Markus Zusak



Doubleday



*****





Wow - what a fantastic read. What a brave writer to use a non-human to narrate this wonderful and moving story. Markus Zusak breaks so many conventions in writing this book. Firstly, he gives away facts at the beginning of chapters. These incorporate information about the chapter to follow. I believe it lessons the need to elaborate. Secondly, he tells the reader what is going to happen later in the book. The marrator says he does this because he "doesn't have much interest in building mystery." He says that there's "so much story" anyhow and has a discussion with the reader.



The protagonist is a young German girl who is fostered by a couple and it is the story of her and the neighbours on Himmel Street, in Molching, Munich during the second world war. It is told beautifully and touchingly about an eleven year old who's mother has to give her up. She is a girl who sees so much suffering and death and a girl with a passion for reading. This is a skill that she learns quite late, taught to her by her poorly educated forster father - "Papa" whome she adores.



It portrays her growing friendship with Rudy, her neighbour and compatriot in her "stealing" and her deep connection with Max, a Jew who the family keep hidden in their basement. The narrator is the collector or souls after the bodies have died.



He points o ut about human frailties, human kindness, and cruelty and what makes us human and inhumane.



It's a must read.

Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
plublished by Harper's Perennial

Purple Hibiscus was a great and easy read on my long flight to Vietnam. I did have to question myself as to why I was reading another book set in Nigeria rather than Graham Greene's "the Quiet America" that was inspired by his stay in Hanoi, in the same Hotel that I was staying in for the first night. However, Chimanda Ngozi Adichie wont critical acclaim for her first book by being shortlisted for the Orange prize for fiction.

She portrays clearly, adolescence in a wealthy Nigerian family, living in fear yet respect of a draconian father, who is violent towards her, her mother and brother, yet an extremely observant Charholic, a philanthropist and successful businessman. She lives a very repressed life until she visits her aunt (her father's sister) and stays with her noisy cousins who laugh a lot. She develops a crush on the local father Amadi, a young missionary who shows kindness and concern for her.

The book is enjoyable, yet brutal with a use of metaphor it depicts a clear image of the life of this adolescent Kambili.

She was brought up with rigidity, severity and schedules and unused to interaction with other children so that she was overawed at her aunts when she met the noisy neighbours "a blur of food stained clothes and fast words".

The title is significant as "purple hibiscus is rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom". Jaja, Kimbili's brother transplants some from his aunts and they are ultimately liberated from their father.

In the light of a social commentary it was interesting to learn that in Nigeria "it's not proper to let an older person do your chores".

It also depicts the politics at the time with a coup, and the new President who was not elected and Kambili's father voiced through his newspaper his political views that he should be known as Head of State. He "paid people to transport heroin abroad". It was a time that soldiers would whip women in the market and she describes the brutality of the soldiers which matched the brutality of her father.

The author was born in Nigeria in 1977 and this was her first novel.