All the Broken Places

This is my first taste of John Boyne's work, and so I did not know that this book followed up his earlier The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I had not read that novel, but I had seen and liked the film based up on it. This later work provides a solid standalone story that impressed me enough to then read the first tale, which also satisfied.

What makes a woman a hero? Irish writer John Boyne’s narrator was a last choice for me—the daughter of a top-ranking Nazi war criminal who carries the burden of her past at 90. But I came to love the voice of this narrator, her brutal honesty with herself and her circumstances, and her growing awareness of her culpability, even as a child, for what happened.

Boyne elegantly explores the question of whether terrible acts by fathers make their children responsible or if children are inherently innocent. The story’s ending was a complete surprise, bringing this character to hero status in… show more.

The sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas does not disappoint. The power of guilt and ghastliness of WWII are some of the elements woven into Gretel Fernsby’s story.

It is an interesting perspective as it is told by a 91-year-old woman who was undoubtedly on the wrong side of history as a child. The story balances the longevity of blame with Gretel’s right to keep her past a secret and as a reader I found myself moving between understanding why there could be no forgiveness for the horrors of Nazism and the recognition of the fact that a… show more.

I loved this book from page one and had to force myself to put it down at night if I wanted to get any sleep.

For me, it was a kaleidoscope of sensations: a fascinating character with a tortured background, a present-day situation where she was flung into a challenging situation that brought up her past, and the constant question of ‘what’s going to happen now?”

All the elements that make a great story and a book I didn’t want to end.

The sequel to Boyne's best-seller The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, this is the story of the daughter of the brutal commandant of the camp from which the boy escaped. We meet her as a 90-year-old feisty lady living in a Mayfair apartment.

I enjoyed the tension as her suspicions about the family downstairs grew. Dare she intervene? Can she survive the consequences? As someone born in the 1940s, I couldn't help but admire the way she copes with 21st-century life. Each chapter in that story is followed by a contrasting one featuring her struggle to come to terms with… show more.