Bravo Zusak! A standing ovation, a mighty opus. You stood Death on her head, removing her dark cloak and scythe, clothing her with feeling and letting us see she has eyes to see and a heart to feel, and the intellect to narrate a compelling story. I was so glad to find out she has a womb. Out of Death comes Life. She has greater aplomb than Nick in telling about Gatsby. 
 In the spring of 1968 at age 19, I made my way to Dachau. I lived just south of Munich and the visit to the defunct concentration camp had a haunting effect upon me that will last until Death comes for me and, I believe, beyond (but eternity's yet another subject; this story was about life.) I went back to Dachau several times, the souls of the living and the dead calling me. As I worked among Germans in nearby Munich, I was surprised to encounter Jews still, or perhaps again, making their home there, so close to Dachau, so soon after Hitler and his henchmen. These early experiences furnished my life with both angst and vision: with angst to recognize the potential for evil within ever human being and with vision to see the possibility for courage and compassion, to pick up a piece of bread to feed a cipher. 
 And that's a big part of what The Book Thief does for me: it captures and again reminds me of these viabilities as they play out near Dachau in the heart of World War II's Nazi Germany in the lives of Liesel and her contemporaries, alive and dead. Death tells Liesel's tragic yet wonderful story in order to keep memory alive. In the words of Elie Wiesel, "Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices." And surely this is Liesel's story not Death's just as Gatsby's isn't Nick's. To remind us to stand up wherever tyranny and power put people down. 
 Zusak took the time and effort to invest the narrative with near perfect words and wonderful sentences and great paragraphs and superb chapters. It would have been too cruel and ironic if the "book thief" had found herself betrayed by the words, sentences, and paragraphs of her story's teller. Flesh fully clothes each character; conflict, action, and suspense oblige the attention of each reader; and the themes are true and consistent throughout, start to finish, and the setting is hauntingly perfect. I hope because of this book I am closer to bending over and picking up some bread to give to a cipher, even if it puts us both at Death's door. 
 It is a mighty work.