Book that shaped me: 06

"Even death has a heart."

When was the first time you realized the true meaning of death? For me, it started out with my grandmother's death. I hadn't realized the depth of it yet. I remember one of my aunts crying and telling me that my grandma would now watch me from above. I remember looking at the sky and wondering if I would be able to see her too. I didn't. Years later, I still weep at night because I couldn't even mourn the death of my favourite person on Earth because I was too young to understand death. I grew up with the idea of death slowly materializing in front of me; one by one, as my favorite folks turned from their physical, smiling self into just a memory; a ghost of my past.

For Liesel, it was kind of similar and she instantly caught my heart because she felt so much like me. This book, as the title already says, is about book thieves. We have Liesel, who quite randomly starts stealing books, later turning into a rebel thief, taking books from people who had plenty of everything in a war stricken Germany. But what Liesel doesn't understand as a child is the fact that these rich people are the loneliest people, waiting for book thieves to come into their house just so that they can feel a little human. Zusak draws these subtle contrasts all throughout the book and I can't appreciate him enough for that.

The second book thief in this story is the narrator. Death tells this story because he is in possession of not only Liesel's little black book but also because he steals away the stories of people; he steals away their lives. So, in a sense, Death too is a book thief. It's not just the fact that Zusak has personified Death in this story, he has carefully made Death with emotions and yes, a heart. Death is humorous at times, sombre in some moments and most of all, he's angry and frustrated. He says at the end of the book,

"I am haunted by humans." Death, in this book, felt like a friend which is in contrast with what people perceive of death: a scary hooded figure, without eyes or a soul, carrying a sickle… Death, instead, likes to watch colours and enjoys the innocence of children. He is afraid of himself sometimes. He's just like us.

The book thief is also about the power of words and language and Zusak has himself used his own play of words to subtly emphasize on that. Liesel's life starts with her urge to learn reading and writing. She grows up to realize how words have such power over the people. She reads to people so that they can escape their reality for a moment. In short, she saves a few people with her words. Towards the end, it is her words that save her.

Coming to the 'boy with hair the colour of lemons' 🥺❤️ Rudy Steiner has my heart. He is the person who makes the book alive with his innocence and his pure friendship and love for Liesel. I will carry a part of Rudy Steiner in me forever.

As for the book, now that I have finished, I wish to go back in time so that I could read the book one more time with the same intensity. I want to relive each moment.

I can see that this is a common feeling people have after finishing this book and that says a lot about how profoundly this book affects the readers. It's called a modern classic for a reason and I'm so glad to have come across this book ❤️

Not a Review: 02

I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me.

- Norwegian Woods by The Beatles.

TW: Death, Depression, Sex, Suicide.

Norwegian Woods by Haruki Murakami is not a love story as many of the readers have labeled it. At least for me, it is not. It is not the doomed story of two lost people. It is, as the author has himself called it, ‘A simple story.’ This book is a journey; it is about life. And death. And everything in between. And in the midst of all these, we have Toru Watanabe, a 20-year-old boy, trying to navigate his feelings and emotions in a fast-changing world.

This work of Murakami has had its share of bad reviews from readers. For me, the fact that I had not read any other work of Murakami before this was an advantage as I went into it with no prejudice.

The subtle comparisons and contrasts that Murakami draws between Life and Death and between the past and the present are what attracted me from the very beginning of the book. The deaths in this book come in a very unexpected fashion that almost feels personal and yet somehow very otherworldly. It is probably why I had expected to cry but didn’t; I couldn’t mourn for the loss of the characters because they were somehow very alien to me. All I could feel was hollow inside me and just as Watanabe describes, it felt as if a part of me got lost with the deaths of those people.

The book has quite a lot of explicit sexual moments which I find are not really enjoyed by most readers. It felt mechanical to me as well; just descriptions of sexual intercourse. If I try to explain it, I think Murakami deliberately wrote it in that way to show the meaninglessness of it all; or maybe I am a little bit biased because there are certain moments in the book that have made me sadder than I ever thought a book could make me. Those moments in the book overshadow this one small discrepancy, for me. Although, I must say that at the beginning, I found myself deeply affected by the way women are portrayed in the book but as the book progressed, I understood the fact that the book is set in Japan around the 1970s and is told from the perspective of a teenager. Anyways, treat this as a statutory warning that you'd have to keep an open mind while navigating this book.

Norwegian Wood is such a work that feels like it never should have ended. It’s probably why it ends on such an abrupt note and as a reader, I have an unexplained obsession for abrupt and unclear endings even though they leave me in an utter state of confusion for days on end. But I like to put my own meanings to those endings and that’s why this novel would remain really close to me because, in my interpretation, I think Toru finds that his life is meaningless without the people he develops a deep connection with.

Lastly, the literary and the musical references in this book make it a little bit more special to me. For books like Norwegian Wood, I don’t really have the words to describe how I feel. All I know is that this book will always have a special place in my heart.