A co-worker, who is a female and much younger than I am, offered her copy of The Book Thief for me to read. She said that she thought I would like it. After reading maybe 40 pages I was already irritated by the way the Death character, who was narrating, acted and talked. At one point I believe he waved at someone. If the book was comedic I might not have minded. But this is supposedly a serious dramatic work. Fantasy and the Holocaust wasn’t working for me. So I skipped to end, read it, and was infuriated at how utterly stupid and trite it was. I felt that the Death character totally cheapened the severity of the subject matter. I even felt irritated that my co-worker thought, for some reason, that I would like it.
Did anyone else have this reaction?