I have just finished reading Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief“, about a small girl in wartime Germany and narrated by Death, as in the one who comes to take souls.  Amongst the hatred of Nazism and falling bombs, the story is of despair and love, cruelty and courage, hard words and big hearts, but told with wry humour and in a dry matter-of-fact prose so that it was only on the last few pages I wept.