Suzanne Leal

I mean, the opera house is a beautiful object.

It made me feel there is little I've felt in the last couple of years to be outwardly patriotic about in the way that I was when I was 20 and backpacking.

But this book made me feel patriotic in the beauty that we were able to have in the Opera House and particularly in this week's news, the importance, as Vicky has said, of art and beauty and how...

Sometimes genius needs to be enough.

We can look at it and admire it rather than trying to bring it down or bring it to everybody.

Sometimes art and beauty stands alone.

So I think it's, as Vicky has said, a book of great beauty and thoughtful historical significance that resonates today.

Look, there's a lot I would agree with you in what you've said, Cassie.

I think the first part, there's a number of chapters.

I think the book's divided into about nine chapters.

And that first chapter, I found hard work.

It gives you, as you've said, a lot of information.

You come cold to this family.

You come cold to the narrator.

And I found it heavy going.

I didn't find a book to the right or the left, so I kept going.

And by the time I got to part two, I was there.

The good thing is, I think, for Marcus Zusak is he is so loved by the readers of The Book Thief that I think most people will give him the benefit of the doubt for that first chapter.

And I wasn't sure whether it was my issue that I'd found that first part so difficult to read or whether it was a general issue with the book.

By the time you get to the second chapter, we've moved from the contemporary story of these five Dunbar boys and we've gone back in time to the Eastern Bloc, to the mother of the boys, Penelope, or Penny as she becomes called.