I’m proud to say The Book Thief couldn’t pull my heartstrings

The Book Thief is based on Markus Zusak’s novel of the same name which, although written for young adults, appears beloved by many, judging from the readers’ reviews on the internet, and the frequent declarations of ‘it’s the best book I’ve ever read!’, and there is our first worrying clue, right there. Over the years, of which there have been more than enough — I am quite ready to shuffle off now — I have come to learn that when anyone declares a book ‘the best book I have ever read!’ it tends to be the only book they have ever read. If you remain unconvinced, I feel I need only refer you to Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, which is basically ‘the best book I’ve ever read’ to the moon and back, even though it is such badly written trash.

So, anyway, they have made a film of ‘the best book I’ve ever read!’, which I haven’t read — after The Alchemist, I gave up on any best books that anyone had ever read — so I can’t tell you what this is like as an adaptation, but can tell you it’s not much of a film, and incredibly irritating. It’s set in Germany, from 1938 until the end of the war, and if forced to describe it in one sentence I would probably go with: a Ladybird primer on Nazism and the holocaust as presented in a pretty snow-globe. And if forced to describe it in one sentence as a Jew, I would probably go with: it’s so hell-bent on being inoffensive it is almost offensive. It steadfastly sidesteps any actual suffering and, instead, offers up a sentimental, treacly affair that wishes only to pull on your heart-strings, if they can be pulled. In this instance, I am quite proud to say, my heart-strings would not be pulled, and actually retracted.