Markus Zusak's The Book Thief is a marvelous story following the life of a bold and mischievous girl, composed of such language so fine that the words ought to have been drawn directly from God himself. The bold and awe-inspiring story of Liesel Meminger will forever remain one of the most amazing tales that I have ever had a chance to explore, and will never and can never be surpassed in it's grandity. And so having said that, this continuation of Liesel’s story cannot begin to compare to The Book Thief and shall remain exactly what it sounds like: mediocre.

All characters and ideas belong to Markus Zusak. I did not create any of the characters and was not, although I do wish I was, a part of the creation of the fictional world of Liesel Meminger.

All acknowledgment and commendation to Mr. Zusak.

--

     I am not one to hold grudges. And I do not like to dwell on the past. Just keeping on moving forward, moving forward. That’s me. Nothing can hold me back, nothing can hold me down. Not even the weight of one-thousand souls.

     I am not a black-robed sickle-girded entity, an image many seem to like like to pin on me, but I do not necessarily hate those interpretations. They make my life - my existence, excuse me - easier. They make my job simple and to-the-point. I like to keep to keep my work completely business-appropriate. I try not to get attached to my customers - my clientele. My victims, as some even say.
     I do not have a hard time forgetting people’s stories. But there are those occasional few that I sometimes allow to linger on my mind for more than just a mere few seconds. There are many I can only faintly recall - plain shadows against their own technicolored skies. However, there is only one whose real significance I can honestly recall - whose legacy deserves more than an implication in this short and bogus autobiography. And that is the Book Thief.

--

     I am suddenly aware of something pressed against my hip, a dull weight caught in my fraying jacket-pocket.  Instinctively my fingers curled around the hard-backed square and curled around the rice-paper pages, swollen and tattooed with the words of a broken and innocent girl. Liesel. Gently my fingertips kissed the frail edges of the book. Spilled letters across the page danced in patterns that came together in bolded formations that read Max, Love, Rudy, and Hubermann. Now theirs was a story that I had a difficult time letting go of.

     Theirs was a story that, in all of its tragic unfortunateness, was beautiful and charming. A love story. Not a shabby significant-other story, no. No, rather it was something much, much more splendid than that.

--

     It has been a long while since I’ve visited Himmel Street. The square and boxlike structures that reminded me of the fat and charred butts of abandoned cigarettes no longer lined those cobblestoned avenues. Instead in their place loomed slim and sleek townhomes with glossy windows and tall wooden front doors. No longer were there children in the alleyways kicking a sun-paled soccer ball between them, the shy curl of laughter still lingering on their lips. Instead I saw sullen and straight faced, pimply-cheeked tweens through the yellow-lit window panes of their extravagant shelters, their fingers mindlessly tapping on small and brilliantly illuminated glass screens that they gripped tightly in their hands.

     I imagined the Book Thief through one of those windows, except the window I was looking through was crooked and unevenly fixated into the dreggy siding of her new home. She was curled into her small bed, a quilted blanket laid tenderly across her lap, and instead of a foreign electronic device, she held caringly in her hands a book. She extended her thin fingers at the wrinkled and painted pages of the finely written literature, and sounded the letters out to the words that wrote The Standover Man. A Jew was standing over her.

--

     There was a bomb. I imagined it being loud. I imagined it being hot.

--

     The aftermath of the air raid left Himmel Street in shambles. The sky was the color of hell’s gates; devilish firecracker slashes carved into the black clouds. I came for many people that day. The Book Thief was not one of them.

     In the moment, I had felt strangely intrusive, which had never been a problem for me before. But I had waited for the Book Thief to say her goodbyes before I very tenderly collected the souls of the ones she loved, one by one. I let them lay in my arms, but they weren’t limp. They were eager. Rosa for one more daring talking-back from that Saumensch! Hans for one more chance to dance his fingers upon the keys and silvery buttons of his - Erik Vandenburg’s - beloved accordion, or for a fresh coat of paint for Liesel so she could continue her midnight studies in the cool and damp ambiance of the basement. And finally Rudy. Poor Rudy. Eager only for the lips of the Book Thief. For the lips of Liesel Meminger. For the girl that he was so absolutely sure that he loved.I had watched the Book Thief as she gingerly caressed the burnt cheeks of Hans and Rosa Hubermann. Of Rudy. His neon hair was stained not with the Jesse Owens black of coal but with the black of demolition and hatred. He had never gotten the Book Thief’s kiss.

--

     That day, Liesel had lost a piece of herself that she had never gotten back. Over the years, people tried. But her caliber was far too complex of a puzzle, made of pieces that didn’t seem to match, yet were perfect fits, and they were so unique in their configuration that there would never again be something that might fit her to fill that missing piece of her.

     The Book Thief had been stolen from.

     The only person that ever came close to completing the part of her that was lacking was Max. Her Max. The Jew. The Jew that needed saving, but who instead wore his yellow star hand in hand with only a girl who was no special but for the fact that she stole books for him. And he saved her.

     When they did meet again, and Himmel Street had been slowly but surely excavated until nothing remained except the bare bones of what used to be, there was new room for hope. Hope for what could be.

--

     I was transfixed by Ms. Liesel Meminger. Sure, when you put it that way - the way I know you’re so deviously forming in your mind: “But she’s a 12 year old girl and you’re .. you’re a centuries-old thing who steals people’s souls!” - then yes, it sounds completely inappropriate and quite wholly absurd. But you’re right. The Book Thief was only a 12 year-old German miss, who has already been through more than most people go through in their entire lifetime, and the idea that she had many, many more years to live for and the mystery of what could become of her scared me. Because I knew that even though she did have such a long life ahead of her, for me those years would layer and layer on top of one another, like the sugary flakes of a breakfast pastry, and sooner than I quite honestly hope her soul will be in my arms and curled into a round of glowing luminescence. And that is something that I did not want to have to do.

     And so I completely and wholeheartedly made an effort to avoid Liesel Meminger at all costs. I do not know what became of her after the tragedy on Himmel Street, after a Jew had appeared at her doorstep for only the second time in her life, or how she ended up in Australia with said Jew by her side. However it’s customary for things to never take effect quite how I originally wanted them to, and it had only been 10 years before me and the Book Thief had come to meet again.

     She was in her early twenties, Max her senior by only a mere 10 or so years. Together they lived in a fantastically small apartment fixated with large glossy windows that overlooked the glittering Sydney Harbor and a big wooden door - just like the new ones, on Himmel Street. However when I looked inside those big glossy windows, I didn’t see them on their shiny mobile phones (so I’ve been told they are). Instead, Max, with hair soft as feathers and skin kin to a fist fighter’s, sat on their neatly kept sofa, tinkering with the silvery buttons on Hans Hubermann’s - previously his own father, Erik’s - beloved accordion. And Liesel, oh, Liesel. She was sat at an old wooden desk, the tip of a pencil’s eraser between her teeth as she subconsciously chewed while she worked to publicate her life’s story, and eventually many more works to come.

--

     I’d liked to think that maybe it was Max who she shared her story with - who she started a family with. Actually, no, I’d like to think that it was Rudy who lived to be able to be able to see the Liesel Meminger in all of her glory and magnificence. But it wasn’t, and maybe it was supposed to be that way.

     I remember that after a long while and I had finally come to take away the Book Thief, the weight of her as I took her toward the orange and pink tinged sherbet sky (one of the most beautiful that I had ever seen) was hardly even a weight at all. It was forgiving and ready and excited, like she was still just a child, even though I had seen her body (I tried not to look) and saw her wrinkled skin draped over her bones, like a sheet covering a restricted sculpture at an art exhibit, and it had been so many years since she wore her dresses, hand-sewn by none other than Rosa Hubermann herself, and her legs had seen the cool German air of her childhood.

     Liesel Meminger - illustrious Jew-hider and savvy thief impresario. She was never just another someone that I saw while on a job and instinctively thought in the back of my mind that one day I’d be slinging her soul over my shoulder with the rest of them. No. And as I am carrying her into the sky with me, deep into the pearly pink oblivion, through the cotton candy clouds and the orange-ish glaze, I can now fathom her story, and grasp the daunting fact that she never really was just Liesel Meminger, daughter of a Kommunist, sister of a dead boy, the adopted Saumensch of two very fortunate people leading very unfortunate lives, friend of a Jewish fistfighter and boy with highlighter hair.

     She was, in all of her tragic glory, in all of her mischievous yet good-intentioned thievery, the Book Thief.