Reviews
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Don't listen to the last chapter while driving...
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Reviewed: 2014-08-12, 13:05, My Rating: 5.0 out of 5, review contains spoilers: No
Big mistake. I teared-up during the last chapter - happy tears and sad tears. Narrow, twisty country lanes, but not much traffic coming the other way, fortunately, so I arrived at work in one piece.
I've read the book before (and seen the film, which wasn't bad at all, though necessarily lacked the intensity of the book), so there weren't really any plot surprises when I chose the Audible audiobook for my daily commute.
Except that Allan Corduner's reading brought the book alive all over again for me. His accent is very good with only a very few mispronunciations of the German sprinkled though the text.
When I hear an audiobook rendered this well, I catch all the little nuances of the text that I often miss when reading. The pace and the individual rendering of the narration was such that every character was filled out beautifully - even the minor characters I grew to love, and the loss of each and every one left a hole.
If you didn't get this book on paper, or wondered what all the fuss was about with the movie, then maybe you should try this audiobook.
Just ... park up somewhere safe when you reach the last chapter. Tissues might be useful, too.
The Book Thief on Amazon
