User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I hardly know where to begin bashing this book. Do I start with the 9-year-old boy and his 12-year-old sister, who read about 6 and 8, respectively? The imperial measurements (miles, feet) despite the German setting? The German boy, raised in Berlin, who thinks that Der Führer is "The Fury" and Auschwitz is "Out-With," despite being corrected several times and
seeing it written down? The other English-language idioms and mis-hearings, despite our being told that he speaks only German? And that he believes that "Heil Hitler!" is a fancy word for hello, because he understands neither "Heil" nor "Hitler"?
So maybe these are fussy issues, and I shouldn't trash the book on these minor linguistic flaws. Instead, I can start with the plot holes big enough to drive a truck through: that Bruno, whose father is a high-ranking official in "The Fury"'s regime, doesn't know what a Jew is, or that he's living next door to a concentration camp. Or that the people wearing the "striped pajamas" are being killed, and THAT's why they don't get up after the soldiers stand close to them and there are sounds "like gunshots." Or that there's a section of fence that is (a) unpatrolled and (b) can be lifted from the ground high enough to pass food and, eventually, a small boy through, AND that nobody would try to get OUT through this hole. Or that Bruno's friend Shmuel, a frail 9-year-old boy, would survive over a year in a Nazi camp. Or even the author's refusal to ever use the word "Auschwitz," in an effort to "make this book about
any camp, to add a universality to Bruno's experience."
That last is from an interview with the author that appears at the end of the audio version. I can't speak to most of what he said, because it was a lot of "here are all the places that are hyping my book," but the worst part of it, to me, was where he was addressing criticisms: "there are people who complain that Bruno is too innocent, too naive, and they are trivializing the message of this book." Um, no. I'm not trivializing the message; I'm objecting to his trivializing of the Holocaust. I find his treatment of the Holocaust to be superficial, misleading, and even offensive.
As an audio recording, I'm pretty neutral. The narrator did the best he could with the material and there was some differentiation between the characters' voices, but the music that was added... some chapters ended with appropriately-somber music. Other chapters had no music at all. Sometimes the music appeared in the middle of a chapter.
Two other incidental notes: first, normally you can't say anything negative about a Holocaust-themed book without being an asshole, because the books are so tied in with the Holocaust itself. In this case, though, I feel like, due to the fictionalizing of it, the book is far enough removed from Auschwitz that it's okay to be negative about the book without being insensitive about the Holocaust. Second, this doesn't land on my "run away! Save yourself!" shelf, because that's more for books that are comically bad--books that I can bash with glee and mock with abandon. I can't find anything funny about what makes this book so bad; it's just plain offensive and shallow.
Rating: really liked it
"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" would easily top my list of "Worst Books about the Holocaust."
I am writing as one who was there -- I was once myself a boy in striped pajamas and am a survivor of six German concentration camps. This book is so ignorant of historical facts about concentration camps that it kicks the history of the Holocaust right in the teeth.
John Boyne's premise is that the nine-year old son of the commandant of Auschwitz, bored with his isolated life, takes walks to the fence surrounding this infamous camp and meets there a nine-year old inmate who is on the other side of the fence. The two boys become friends and continue meeting on a daily basis.
Here is some news for Mr. Boyne. The 10-ft high barbed wire fence surrounding each camp was electrified. Touch if once and you are fried. There was a no-man's land on each side of the fence; along the inside perimeter of the fence were guard towers; each tower was manned by an armed guard around the clock; each guard was responsible for one segment of the fence within his vision; it was his duty to prevent anyone from approaching the fence, either from the inside, or from the outside; he was under orders to shoot anyone he saw approaching the no-man's-land.
In addition, along the outside perimeter, prominent signs proclaimed, "STOP - Danger - High-Voltage Electricity." So that even a dense nine-year-old would get the message, a skull and cross-bones were pictured at the top of each sign.
Let me add this. A nine-year-old boy arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau on a cattle train would take only a single walk in this camp: from the train to the gas chamber.
"The Boy in The Striped Pajamas" makes a mockery of these very basic facts. It is a fantasy that does untold damage to the cause of truth about the Holocaust. This book has only one purpose: to make a lot of money for the author and the publisher. And this purpose it accomplishes. The publisher recently proudly trumpeted in an ad in the New York Times: over one-million copies sold and still going strong. And that's not even counting the profits from the revolting movie based on this book.
Peter Kubicek
Author of "MEMORIES OF EVIL" -- a factual book about the Holocaust that will never make it on any list of best books about the Holocaust because my book tells it the way it was: there was nothing cute, nothing in any way benign about the concentration camps. These camps were about brutality, starvation, and sheer terror.
Rating: really liked it
3.5*
I didn't love this, but I did appreciate the fact that it had a very powerful message (and an ending I wasn't expecting at all). My feelings were definitely changed by the fact that the author describes the story as a fable. The abstractness makes a lot more sense in that way. Definitely an unforgettable read, nonetheless!
Rating: really liked it
As Michael Kors once sighed to a clueless designer on
Project Runway: Where do I start?
Let's open with some descriptive words that sum up this book, and I will then go on to explain them in further detail: Patronizing. Insipid. Smarmy. Just plain
bad.
Patronizing: I believe that to write good children's literature, you have to think that children are intelligent, capable human beings who are worth writing for - like Stephen King, who probably thinks kids are smarter than adults. The author of
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, on the other hand, clearly thinks that children are idiots. The main character, Bruno, is supposed to be nine years old, but compared to him Danny Torrance of
The Shining (who was six) looks like a Mensa member. There's childlike naivety, and then there's Bruno, who is so stunningly unobservant and unperceptive that I actually started to wonder if he was supposed to be mentally deficient somehow. And he's not the only child who receives Boyne's withering scorn and condescension. Take this scene between Bruno and his sister Gretel, when they've just moved to their house at "Out-With" (as Bruno
insists on calling it, despite being corrected many times and seeing the name
written down) and are wondering how long they're going to stay there. Bruno's father, a commandant in charge of the camp, has told the kids that they'll be there "for the foreseeable future" and Bruno doesn't know what that means.
"'It means weeks from now,' Gretel said with an intelligent nod of her head. 'Perhaps as long as three.'"
Gretel is twelve years old, by the way. TWELVE. See what I meant about Boyne thinking kids are morons?
Insipid And Smarmy: this book was not meant for kids to read. It's meant for adults who know about the Holocaust already, so they can read it and sigh over the precious innocent widdle children's adorable misunderstanding of the horrible events surrounding them and how they still remain innocent and uuuuuuggggggghhhhh. There's a scene towards the end, where Bruno puts on a pair of the "striped pajamas" so he can visit his friend on the other side of the fence. Bruno has had lice, so his head is shaved. When he puts on the pajamas, the Jewish boy observes him and the narration commits the following Hallmark-worthy atrocity: "If it wasn't for the fact that Bruno was nowhere near as skinny as the boys on his side of the fence, and not quite so pale either, it would have been difficult to tell them apart. It was almost (Shmuel thought) as if they were all exactly the same really."
YES JOHN BOYNE I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.
Just Plain Bad: This book is, technically, historic fiction, but I'm not putting it on my history shelf, because there is nothing historical in this book. Bruno is supposed to have grown up in Nazi Germany, the son of a high ranking SS officer, but based on his knowledge of everything, he's spent his entire nine years sitting inside with his eyes shut humming loudly while covering his ears. Okay, I get that he wouldn't know about the concentration camps - hardly anyone did at that point. But there are other things: Bruno consistently (and adorably!) mispronounces the Fuhrer as "the Fury" (I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE JOHN BOYNE), and doesn't recognize the following key words and phrases: Jews, Fatherland,
Heil Hitler. What. The fuck. Okay, so maybe this kid's too young to be in Hitler Youth (his sister isn't though, but for some reason she's not in it either), but come on - he thinks "Heil Hitler" is just a polite way to end a conversation.
A nine-year-old boy growing up in a military household in Nazi Germany doesn't know what Heil Hitler means.All of this comes back to my original thesis: John Boyne thinks that children are idiots.
Look, Boyne: just because
you don't understand anything (history, children, good writing) doesn't mean the rest of us are quite so useless. Go cash your checks for that awful movie adaptation they did of this book and never try to make a statement about anything ever again, please.
Read for: Social Justice in Young Adult Literature
Rating: really liked it
Two innocent boys, and two very different worlds, separated by a not so infallible fence.Berlin 1942, middle of WWII, beginnings of the Holocaust. Bruno is a little boy of barely nine years old, son of a very well standing german family. His life passes relatively uneventful until one day his father is appointed commander in a faraway region. Bruno, his sister Gretel and his parents are compelled to relocate to Out-With, to a much smaller house, forsaking family and friends, and sacrificing everything for the important rank promotion.
In this new house isolated from the rest of the world, Bruno finds a small window that allows him to see at the distance an incredibly large area with tiny little huts; and an endless number of tiny little figures dressed in a curious striped outfit. Mature, old people... and children. In a huge wire fenced field.
Excellent historical fiction novel. A must read alongside the Diary of Anne Frank. Two unique and different perspectives of a same tragedy. A novel about the cruelties of war, and the self invented differences that lead humanity to separate itself. Highly recommendable. Very powerful. Painful as few others.
Still remaining, the movie (2008).
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PERSONAL NOTE :
[2006] [240p] [Historical] [Highly Recommendable] [Curious Bruno] [Innocent Shmuel] [Ending Alert] [Oh, the humanity!]
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Dos niños inocente, y dos mundos muy diferentes, separados por un no tan infalible alambrado.Berlín 1942, mediados de la segunda guerra mundial, principios del Holocausto. Bruno es un pequeño nene de escasos nueve años, hijo de una familia alemana de buen pasar. Su vida transcurre sin mayores problemas hasta que un día su padre es designado comandante en una región lejana. Bruno, su hermana Gretel y sus padres se ven obligados a reubicarse en Out-With a una casa más pequeña, abandonando familia y amigos en sacrificio de la importante promoción laboral.
En esta nueva casa aislada del mundo, Bruno encuentra una pequeña ventana que permite entrever a la distancia una enorme cantidad de pequeñas chozas; y un sinfin de pequeñas figuras vistiendo un curioso uniforme de rayas. Gente adulta, mayor... y niños. En un enorme campo alambrado.
Excelente novela histórica de ficciٕón. Un must para leer del tema, junto al Diario de Ana Frank. Dos perspectivas únicas y diferentes de una misma tragedia. Una novela sobre las crueldades de la guerra, y sobre las diferencias autoinventadas que llegan a separar la humanidad. Muy recomendable. Muy poderosa. Dolosoa como pocas.
Queda pendiente, la película (2008).
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NOTA PERSONAL :
[2006] [240p] [Histórica] [Altamente Recomendable] [Curioso Bruno] [Inocente Shmuel] [Alerta de Final] [Oh, la humanidad!]
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Rating: really liked it
I seriously suggest you read about what happened to real children in the Holocaust. It won't fill your thoughts for many days or shock you; rather it will fill your LIFE and make you feel sick to the core of your being.
Paul Friedlander, himself a survivor, recounts in his recent highly praised book the incident of 90 Jewish infants all under the age of five, orphaned after their parents were murdered in a mass shooting.
These children were subjected to indescribable mistreatment for days.
Then they were individually hanged.
I read this with horror, revulsion and total disbelief.
(ref.The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939 - 1945)
Or the incident of the young German soldier participating in the evacuation of the patients in the hospital in the Warsaw Ghetto. In the presence of a distraught Jewish crowd of relatives and onlookers, patients were being thrown onto the backs of trucks.The babies were being thrown from the upper windows. The soldier requested and was given permission to catch the falling babies on his bayonet.
(ref. The Holocaust - the Jewish Tragedy by Martin Gilbert.
ISBN 0 00 637194 9 )
There are so many historical inaccuracies and ludicrous details in this totally implausible story of Boyne's eg. Bruno's ignorance of basics, impossible when he would have been in the Hitler Youth and the Nazi education system.This travesty of the Holocaust is called a 'fable' as if with all its faults, it has special claim on some gravitas, thus giving Boyne justification for this lame expose of racism.
I was a member of the Jewish Holocaust Committee here in Sydney for a while and once had to endure a young rabbi lecturing on how the Holocaust was God's punishment on the Jews. So there are fools to be found inside the club as well as outside it.
Not a single pure ethnic German child entered a gas chamber as part of the extermination of the Jews...although many died in Germany as part of the
pre-war killing of disabled and retarded children.When protests brought this program to a close the same staff were later sent to operate the gas chambers in the camps.
And for six million Jewish men, women and children there was no saviour.
This bitter pill is too much for some people to swallow.
Some, like the young rabbi, takes refuge in blaming the very victims;
others find refuge in sentimental fiction such as Boyne's which does no honour to these tragic, lost people. And today there are perverse forces abroad, from renowned historians to Catholic bishops, who would deny that the Holocaust ever took place or to an extraordinary lesser degree.They use every discrepancy of detail as well as lies to justify their denial. So for anyone touching on this subject it is vital and morally incumbent on them to GET THE FACTS RIGHT.
There is an overwhelming library of rivetting, emotional, inspiring and tragic Holocaust stories out there - all factual, which you may have already plunged into. Boyne may even have led you there. But finally Boyne just deserves to fade away.
P.S.The Oscar winning Foreign Language film of 1997, "Life is Beautiful", was also, not surprisingly, referred to as a 'fable'. It also is an implausible piece of Holocaust sentimentality and a stampede away from having to swallow the bitter pill of reality.
Rating: really liked it
When I saw the film version at the cinema, the entire audience remained in their seats and sobbed into tissues as the credits rolled. I’ve never experienced anything like it since. With John Boyne finally releasing a much-anticipated sequel, I figured it was about time I read this!
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a simple, yet powerful fable-like story. It was a quick read, but one that will remain with me, and one which I’m still thinking about. This is definitely a book that pulls at the heartstrings. A lump in the throat accompanied my reading for a large portion, particularly the end.
John Boyne succeeded in making me view the world through the eyes of a naïve, but curious and inquisitive nine-year-old again. He repeated numerous phrases and sentences throughout, some such as “Out-With” and “The Fury”, adding childhood innocence to words that stand for anything but. The book certainly picked up once Bruno (the main character) befriended Shmuel (a boy in striped pajamas that lived over the ‘fence’).
“Bruno was sure that he had never seen a skinnier or sadder boy in his life but decided that he had better talk to him.”Boyne created tension well; most notably the kitchen scene featuring Shmuel, Bruno and the evil Lieutenant Kotler. It was anxiety-inducing and a sense of foreboding grew throughout the book. My heart ached whenever the likes of Shmuel or Pavel were mentioned. I couldn’t help but wonder about the back story of Pavel in particular.
“Don’t make it worse by thinking it’s more painful than it actually is.”Despite having seen the film, there were enough small differences to keep things interesting – most notably a head shaving scene and the ending. I actually thought the film ending was more powerful and emotional than the book's, which despite also packing a punch, tapered off in comparison.
There are plenty of historical inaccuracies, yes, but this is fiction after all, and aimed at younger readers. If this book acts as a stepping stone into learning about the Holocaust more fully, then that will always be a good thing.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a book that I wish was around during my school years. Boyne has crafted an intelligent, yet simple story whose use of metaphors and various themes cause the reader to pause and reflect. Books like this are relevant more than ever. I’m keen to read the sequel.
“It was almost (Shmuel thought) as if they were all exactly the same really.”
Rating: really liked it
A powerful concept, but very poorly written (even allowing for the young adult target audience) - and one of a tiny number of books I can think of that was better in the film version.
PlotBruno is 9 and lives in Berlin in 1943 with his parents and 12 year old sister. They are wealthy and his father is an important soldier who is promoted to be the Commandant at Auschwitz. The trick of the story is that Bruno doesn't realise the horror of what goes on behind the barbed wire, where everyone wears striped pyjamas, even when he befriends a boy of the same age at a corner of the camp.
Although his father can be strict and distant, Bruno is unfailing in his trust in the goodness of his father. In the film, there was at least a gradual, if reluctant, dawning of doubt about his father and all he stood for, but that doesn't happen in the book; the themes of family, friendship and trust are barely touched on.
Implausible IgnoranceThe main problem is that it's told from Bruno's viewpoint, and he is ridiculously naive and ignorant for the son of a senior Nazi.
Not knowing, and not wanting to know, the horror of what was happening is entirely understandable (especially when a parent is involved).
However, he hasn't heard of "the Fatherland", thinks the Fuhrer is called The Fury (throughout), that Auschwitz is called "Out With" and that "Heil Hitler" means "goodbye"! Yet we're meant to believe that he's the 9 year old son of a senior Nazi! His father had clearly been neglecting his duty to train the next generation of Hitler youth.
And anyway, the puns wouldn't work in German.
What is even more insulting to readers is that Boyne has responded to this widespread point of criticism by saying that anyone who thinks the boy is too naive is denying the holocaust! (See Kelly H. (Maybedog) comment on Oct 02, 2012 and subsequent ones).
Other Flaws* Surely some aspects of Schmuel's plight would have been glaringly obvious (emaciated, shorn hair, possibly lice-ridden, ragged clothes etc)?
* There are several stock phrases that are trotted out annoyingly often ("a Hopeless Case", "mouth in the shape of an O", "if he was honest as he always tried to be").
* They talk of miles not kilometres and feet not centimetres, which might not matter were the rest of it more realistic.
* Just occasionally, and completely out of character, Bruno talks in an unnaturally adult way ("If you ask me we're all in the same boat. And it's leaking", and a nasty person who "always looked as if he wanted to cut someone out of his will").
It might have worked better if Bruno had been 5 or 6, but I suppose the target audience would have been less willing to read it, so the result is a book that isn't really suitable for any age group. What a waste.
Postscript 1Arising from Kelly Hawkins' review:
Boyne says:
I think the most frequent criticism of the book in the years since it’s been published is that Bruno is too naive. People say: “He’s verging on the stupid – how could he not know?” For all the criticisms you can make, I always feel that’s the wrong one because he’s grown up in a house with his father wearing a uniform, so I always think why would be question it? There wouldn’t be any motivation for him to suddenly turn around… if your father came home wearing a doctor’s uniform every day, you wouldn’t turn around one day and ask: “Why are you wearing that?”
So, Bruno is kind of representing that blindness, in a way. When he goes to the fence, and when he asks that question, he is kind of representing the rest of us who are trying to understand the Holocaust and find some answers to it. Also, when the camps were liberated, the world was surprised through 1945 and 1946. The majority of the Holocaust had taken place over four years and, granted, it was a different information age but I still maintain that in those sorts of movies, the naivety is appropriate. It’s based on real life.
From: http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Books-Re...
Elsewhere, he is quoted as saying that naivety and complacency were two of the main reasons the Holocaust occurred (http://yareviews.wikispaces.com/The+B...).
I find that a very unsatisfying defence. It answers why people don't want to know the horrors (which I fully acknowledge), but does not begin to tackle Bruno's specific ignorance of common words related to the Third Reich.
Postscript 2, October 2015His new book has a similar title and another Nazi theme - with Hitler himself this time: The Boy at the Top of the Mountain. I won't be reading that, but I suspect it will cause similar controversy.
Postscript 3See this excellent review by a survivor of Nazi concentration camps. Boyne (posting as John) responded to some of the criticisms:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Postscript 4, 14 May 2017In today's Sunday Times, the Prime Minister
Theresa May was asked by a 19-year old in her constituency, "Has your thinking ever changed because of a novel?"
She replied:
"
A book that brought something home to me was The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. It is a very, very cleverly written book and a very well-written book, and what it brings home is the absolute horror of the Holocaust."
Hmmm.
Rating: really liked it
"When he closed his eyes, everything around him just felt empty and cold, as if he was in the loneliest place in the world. The middle of nowhere."
*May 2021 Re-read
One of the worst fictional sister characters. Gretel, you're really annoying. Exactly a Hopeless Case.
Maria's character is memorable. She's grateful and I really appreciate such characters in stories.
But you know the most memorable character in the entire story is? The one who peels potatoes. Pavel. I will always have a soft spot for this character.
The complicated father character is something I want to learn more about.
And another most hateful fictional character ever? Don't let me talk about Lieutenant Kotler. Apart from the highly hateful behaviour, I do not forgive someone who are cruel towards animals. Can he just disappear in my next reread? I just cannot stand this character.
Real easy to start and finish in one sitting.
This was a really good read. I couldn't help getting images of the movie adaptation that I have watched a long time ago.
I loved everything about this book.
I loved the fact that this book made me love some of the characters so much as well as hate a few hateful characters to the core.
I thought this book would make me cry buckets and buckets but I didn't.
Actually it clutched my whole being. And I just had to keep on reading it till the last page as I couldn't stop reading it.
Yes, it is this interesting.
The characters were so alive and unique on their own.
Bruno and Shmuel. Your innocence and friendship will be etched forever in my soul.
One of my most favourite classics so far.
Planning to read more John Boyne👍
So worth it!
Highly recommended👍
Rating: really liked it
quick reread because, lets face it, im high-key obsessed with john boyne. this is my seventh JB book in less than a month. when i hit my tenth, someone please stage an intervention. lol.
i first read this years ago, so i forgot just how innocent the perspective of this story is. which i think makes it even more haunting. we, as humans, are not born with hatred; its something we learn and acquire throughout life. and what a horrible thing that is. to see how carefree a child can be in the most horrific of times is so heartbreaking, because it shows he doesnt have to capacity to see how truly monstrous humanity can be. this story is definitely one to make your mind reflect and your heart ache.
↠ 4.5 stars
Rating: really liked it
“Very slowly he turned his head back to look at Shmuel, who wasn't crying anymore, merely staring at the floor and looking as if he was trying to convince his soul not to live inside his tiny body anymore, but to slip away and sail to the door and rise up into the sky, gliding through the clouds until it was very far away.'' Nine year old Bruno has to leave his home in Berlin and move with his family to a place called Out-With for his father's new job. Bruno is terribly homesick and he starts to wonder about the sad people in striped pyjamas he can see on the other side of the fence. One day he decides to go exploring and he meets Shmuel, who is sitting near the fence separating the two sides. They start talking and eventually Bruno's homesickness dissapears as they become good friends with every passing day.
A story of childhood innocence caught in the unforgiving clutches of war, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas will make you brim with emotions with it's simple words, effortless humor and captivating narration. Although a work of fiction, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is so poignant because the backdrop of the story is real. The war and the holocaust are both real. This added a layer of darkness to the book. The story was made all the more touching because it was told from a child's perspective. A child who has no idea what's going on in the world around them, who makes friends with someone without thinking about their identity, religion or race.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is written in such a beautiful innocent way and it made me feel so many emotions. A wonderful piece of historical fiction.
Highly Recommend.
Rating: really liked it
There are plenty of insightful reviews on this piece of sensationalist, badly written, idiotic Disneyfication of the Holocaust on Goodreads. I don't have anything to add to the criticism, except that I would love to see it taken off the curriculum in schools.
Here are my replacement suggestions:
Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary 1939-1944
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw
And of course for more mature students, I recommend Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel and other authentic witness accounts.
The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is a shameless money-making machine without writing skill or depth, without nuance or finesse, without basic knowledge of history or children's levels of understanding at age 9, and without the slightest ethical guidelines.
The target group is unfortunately a generation of parents, teachers and children who have lost touch with complex historical and linguistic knowledge and who need a babyish, fictionalised, shockingly inaccurate version of the Second World War to stay focused - and that is unacceptable in my opinion. Instead of giving in to the lower level of comprehension, we need to put in the extra effort to be able to read on the same level as generations of children before! We can't afford to lose the literacy fight, as it means losing the fight for historical knowledge and distinctions!
Rating: really liked it
I did enjoy this book although not as much as some others. It’s a gruesome and sad topic told through the point of view of an innocent little boy a great concept and expertly executed. The author does a wonderful job in the voice of the young boy. The language and syntax are adult with enough smatterings of the child’s perceptions and reflections and word choice to make it real. Excellent, job here. The author also doesn’t beat the reader over head with descriptions or facts and gives a great deal of credit to the reader to understand and figure out what is happening. Calling the man, The Fury is an excellent example as well as The Out With. Amazing creativity. This creativity is in part what held me in the story. I will definitely read more by this author and recommend this book.
David Putnam Author of The Bruno Johnson Series.
Rating: really liked it
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is truly an amazing yet daunting novel that I will never forget. The author John Boyne did a masterful job of depicting the setting in such vivid detail and exposing the events in a manner that I felt a constant emotional pull as the story unfolded and impending doom lingered on the horizon.
I was recommended this novel a while back while reading The Book Thief, but after finishing that story and experiencing such deep sadness, I knew I couldn’t jump into another novel about the Holocaust for quite some time. I’m glad I waited because as with other works that cover this topic, distance and perspective is key. I feel the author did a grand job of juxtaposing two resounding themes in such a flawless manner; one being of the
evil that was the Holocaust; against the second theme that of the
innocence of a child.
I thought it was brilliant of Boyne to tell the story from the perspective of a nine year old German boy as you experience the events of this abominable and unthinkable time in history as a mere complicit bystander, which ultimately leaves you with a sense of hopelessness.
The story unfolds the day Bruno arrives home to discover his family is moving from Berlin to Auschwitz where his father will serve as a Commandant for the concentration camp. Bruno is forced to leave his three best friends for life and discovers that life in Auschwitz is lonely and desolate. All that changes the day he meets a boy his exact age and they begin to forge a friendship over the course of year. However, as much as he finds he and Schmuel have in common, living on opposite sides of the fence proves to have a devastating consequence to their friendship.
After completing this book, I did some research on the author and the novel and found that he not only received well deserved praise for this book, but also harsh criticism. As with any piece of literature, when words are committed to page and presented to an audience for their interpretation there will be varying degrees of acceptance and backlash. Couple that with such a sensitive topic and you’re bound to get a reaction. Well, my hats off to John Boyne for tackling a story through a unique perspective and presenting a poignant fable that as a reader I willingly suspended my reality and experienced the events in a way that exposed my emotions and feelings to such a raw level. Well done IMHO.
Rating: really liked it
Lincoln's doctor's dog. An archaic reference in the publishing industry to the notion that the way to ensure a book is a bestseller is to write about Lincoln, dogs, or doctors. This prompted one author to title his book which is about publishing in the 1930s Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog.
- From www.metaphordogs.org
Maybe Lincoln, doctors and dogs have gone out of fashion; but children, the Holocaust and friendship are still the rage. So the sure-fire formula for creating a bestseller is to write a story about children’s friendship during the Holocaust…
…even if you don’t know the first thing about it.
The Boy in Striped Pyjamas is the heart-warming (read “emotionally manipulative”) story of the doomed friendship between two pre-teen boys, born on the same day (one Jew and one the son of a Nazi) and its inevitable tragic conclusion. Yes, that’s right: get your handkerchiefs here, folks.
When I review a book, I look at both the medium and the content. Sometimes, you will find a great story which is badly written: at other times, a story which is only so-so will be made palatable through great prose. Sometimes you have both, and the book becomes really enjoyable. And when the medium and the content are so aptly intertwined to be inseparable, you have a truly great book.
Very rarely, you have the misfortune to encounter a really abominable story which is abysmally written into the bargain – this happened to me with this book. The only good thing I can say about it is that it is a very fast read.
Now for the analysis.
The BackgroundThis book is historical fiction (yes, yes, I know that the author has claimed it is a fable situated in the time of the Holocaust: but unfortunately, the Holocaust is history) yet it pays no heed to historical accuracy. Auschwitz, according to my knowledge, had no children – they were sent to gas chambers the moment they arrived. Yet here we have a camp which is literally crawling with kids, almost like a kindergarten.
We also have a German child Bruno, who despite being the son of a high-ranking Nazi officer who is very close to Hitler, does not know about Aryans, Jews and the concentration camps. Agreed, he may not be aware of the atrocities going on in those places: but in the real world, he would have been inducted into the fairy tales about Aryan supremacy and the “Jewish problem”. In the book, Bruno remains blissfully ignorant about all until the end. He almost seems mentally challenged.
My knowledge about Auschwitz comes from reading history books only, but as far as I know, the camps were guarded by electrified fences and patrolled heavily across the clock. It would not have been easy for somebody just to lift up the barbed wire and crawl in. And how was Schmuel (the Jewish boy) able to constantly evade the guards and come to the same spot at the fence where it was loose at the bottom? (Yeah, it’s a fable, I know: maybe the exigencies of plot also had to do with the historical manipulation?)
CharacterisationBruno is easily one of the most annoying protagonists ever created. Naiveté one can understand – it is difficult to understand outright stupidity. The boy simply refuses to see what happens in front of his eyes. Even if he has not been indoctrinated (impossible, as mentioned earlier, in Nazi Germany), he would have picked up much more. Children do.
Most of the other characters are pasteboard, including Schmuel, the Jewish kid, put there as props to support the plot and move it along. They are all one-dimensional other than the servant Maria and the Jewish doctor-turned-waiter Pavel. But they serve only to fill the space around Bruno.
The WritingI could have forgiven Mr. Boyne for all these historical blunders and failures in characterisation, had he written good prose. But that is the most terrible part of the book – the prose is puerile.
First, the repetition. Bruno’s mouth forms an “O” and his hands stretch out at his sides whenever he is surprised, which is quite often: ultimately I started picturing him as a cartoon stick figure I used to draw as a kid. We are told that his sister Gretel is a Hopeless Case every time she is mentioned. The same with Father’s office being Out Of Bounds At All Times And No Exceptions… I could go on and on.
As a teen, I used to watch Hollywood war movies in which all Germans spoke English. While I could understand that this gimmick was required to avoid subtitles, sometimes they spoke English with a German accent… maybe to highlight their “German-ness” … this I found ridiculous. I had the same feeling about the puns Boyne used in this novel (“Fury” for Fuhrer and “Out-with” for Auschwitz). I don’t even know whether they will work in German.
However, the biggest problem was the child’s POV. It’s just idiotic… an adult talking baby talk and trying to imitate a child. Once in a while, the adult pops out from behind the visage (“we are all in the same boat, and it’s leaking”). It’s just tiresome.
The narrative was problematic. Half the time, I was not sure whether the author was writing an adult’s novel with a child’s viewpoint, or a mature novel for children – it fails on both counts. As I said before, the child’s POV does not work, and even with all the toned-down violence it’s not a suitable novel for children.
And plot holes… don’t get me talking about them! From the loose fence under which one can crawl through, the story jumps from hole to hole till it drops into the biggest hole of them all, the tragic finale. By that time, Boyne is pushing all the emotional buttons, trying to bring the tears on at full throttle… but the real tragedy here is the death of literature.
I understand that this book is a bestseller, and I can understand the reasons. I regret to say that this seems to me like adroit marketing of human tragedy… successful in this case.
