redshift

A Small Theory

People observe the colours of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it’s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colours. Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darknesses. In my line of work, I make it a point to notice them.

The Book Thief is a book about a German girl called Liesel Meminger, set during the second world war, and it is narrated by Death.

This book has been much talked-about amongst my friends, and I’d been led to expect great things of it, but it actually took me two attempts to get through it, and I spent a lot more time over it than I typically do with books. This isn’t entirely the book’s fault, but I think that on first picking it up I did perhaps feel a little disappointed, as though it wasn’t living up to expectations. The use of German phrases in the text disconcerted me (although they are explained and not just sitting there untranslated), and the story didn’t have enough instant draw to pull me in and make me unable to put it down. I planned to finish it eventually because it seemed interesting, but I wasn’t massively enthusiastic.

Allow me to exercise my right to completely change my mind. This book is, once it warms up, actually pretty fantastic, and definitely rewarded the effort I put into getting through the beginning. As you may have surmised from my initial sentence about the subject matter of the book, it’s not a happy story. It’s a long way from being unremittingly depressing, though, and in many ways I found it uplifting. It’s humorous and engaging. It’s (to borrow a word from a friend yet again) unsentimental, too, and deals with terrible things in a very matter-of-fact manner which feels fair and honest, and I respect that a great deal.

It’s also just (just?) a Very Good Story, with some wonderfully human characters.

At some point I believe I may have cried.

They say that war is death’s best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like a new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder rpeating one thing, incessantly. ‘Get it done, get it done.’ So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.