All The Broken Places: The Sequel to The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

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Later, at age 21, Gretel leaves Europe to make a fresh start in Australia. However, a chance encounter with her father's former personal aide — "the monster's apprentice" — leads her to commit a drastic act and seek new sanctuary. Then in London in 1953, she finds love with a Jewish man called David — until she comes clean to him about her true origins.

But memories start to stir within Gretel when a new family moves into the flat directly below her. The nine year old boy, Henry, reminds her of the loss of her brother when he was that very same age so long ago. And as the mind plays its game of dominoes, one memory parlays upon another and dead timber rises to the surface. Gretel is an interesting proposition for the reader. You have to ask yourself how complicit she was while living in Auschwitz. How much did she know, and how much is she telling us? I think that will affect your opinion of the book - I felt that she was young when it happened, though she could have come forward to the authorities earlier. But she's kind and thoughtful and at times has tried to do good in her life. She's also funny and strong-willed, but complicated. Very human, in other words. The sequel has Boyne’s skill and immorality: but this time, less of the first, and more of the second. It has, in parts, the tone of a serious, literary novel and a calm and self-aware narrator in Gretel, a woman with all Boyne’s careful words at her disposal, living in a sumptuous flat in Mayfair, of all places. Gretel is Bruno’s older sister, now in her 90s, ruminating on a lifetime of concealment and tidal guilt. John Boyne will seat us right next to Gretel as she shuffles the scenery of her youth in Berlin during World War II. She's twelve years old and the family has moved to Auschwitz in Poland where her father is a commandant of one of the Reich's most notorious extermination camps. The family maintains their home right on the other side of the camp. Family life ignores the element of horror and tragedy only so many feet away. Following the kidnapping, Gretel relocates to London, where she finds work at Selfridges. She falls for a coworker, David, initially unaware he’s Jewish until his friend Edgar tells her so. Nevertheless, she begins a romantic relationship with him. However, after attending a showing of a film about the Holocaust and seeing footage of her family in the film, Gretel runs out of the theatre and jumps in front of a bus in an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide. In the hospital, Edgar informs her about David’s past; how he was born in Prague and escaped with his grandparents after the occupation, and that parents and sister were delayed and disappeared, ultimately being murdered in Treblinka extermination camp. Gretel also learns in hospital that she is pregnant with David's child. After being discharged, she comes clean and tell David the story of her life. He is disgusted and abandons her despite that she is carrying his child. Eventually, Gretel marries Edgar and gives up her and David’s daughter (whom she names Heidi) for adoption.

READERS GUIDE

I have had quite a degree of difficulty trying to rate and review this book. I notice that many people are rating it five stars but I cannot do that because it would put it on the same standing as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and to me at least it is certainly not that good.

A powerful novel about secrets and atonement after Auschwitz… All the Broken Places is a defence of literature's need to shine a light on the darkest aspects of human nature; and it does so with a novelist's skill, precision and power." - The Guardian (UK)Forbes, Malcom (2022-12-02). "Review: 'All the Broken Places,' by John Boyne". Star Tribune . Retrieved 2023-01-09. From the author of the multi-million-copy classic, and The Heart's Invisible Furies. A devastating, beautiful story about a woman who must confront the sins of her past and a present in which it is never too late for bravery. This novel, this exceptional, layered and compelling story, is built on modern history and all of us people who live it. The protagonist, the elderly, forthright and mysterious Mrs. Fernsby, is more than memorable and every one of Boyne's characters, and every scene, dark or light, is limned in truth and insight. This book moves like a freight train,with force and consequence for the reader. Amy Bloom

A young family moves into the apartment below her and against her usual judgement ends up building a friendship with Henry, a young boy who reminds her of memories she would rather forget.

The Devil’s Daughter

This novel, this exceptional, layered and compelling story,is built on modernhistory and all of us people who live it. The protagonist, the elderly, forthright and mysteriousMrs. Fernsby,is more thanmemorable andevery one of Boyne’scharacters,andevery scene,darkor light,is limnedin truth and insight. Thisbookmoves likea freight train,with force and consequence for the reader.”

If the point is that this could happen to anyone, it is very obliquely made. There are serious objections to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. A child like Bruno would know what Nazism is, and would be schooled to hate Jews. A child like Shmuel would not be at liberty to walk the fence, and his anger is so muted it is nonexistent. He is not yet dead, and already he is silenced. We see Gretel as a child in Germany, a teen in France, a young woman in Australia, and through many decades of life in London. What changes did you notice in Gretel’s personality throughout the years? Not everyone agrees. A 2016 study published by the Centre for Holocaust Education, a British organisation housed at University College London, found that 35 per cent of British teachers used his book in their Holocaust lesson plans, and that 85 per cent of students who had consumed any kind of media related to the Holocaust had either read the book or seen its movie adaptation. David never knows about the daughter he conceived with Gretel. What do you think of Gretel’s decision not to tell him about her pregnancy? If every man is guilty of all the good he did not do, as Voltaire suggested, then I have spent a lifetime convincing myself that I am innocent of all the bad. It has been a convenient way to endure decades of self-imposed exile from the past, to see myself as a victim of historical amnesia, acquitted from complicity, and exonerated from blame.Unlike Striped Pyjamas, All the Broken Places is intended for adults. It’s filled with sex, violence, suicide attempts and bad language – and also some details of the Holocaust that were omitted from the first book. It mentions the Sobibor death camp by name, for example, and also takes the time to correct Bruno’s childish assumptions about the death camps being a “farm”. Boyne has defended The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by pointing to its subtitle, “A Fable”, and his efforts to educate children that the book is a novel. Fiction should not bear the burden of education, he argues. Nonetheless, a survey by the London Jewish Cultural Centre found that 75 per cent of respondents thought that it had been based on a true story. During his writing process, Boyne said he was concerned with “the emotional truth of the novel” as opposed to holding to historical accuracy, and defended much of the book’s ahistorical details – such as moving the Auschwitz guards’ living quarters to outside the camp, and putting no armed guards or electric fences between Bruno and Shmuel – as creative licence. A common critique of the book, that the climax encourages the reader to mourn the death of Bruno over that of Shmuel and the other Jews in the camps, makes no sense to Boyne: “I struggle to understand somebody who would reach the end of that book and only feel sympathy for Bruno. I think then if somebody does, I think that says more, frankly, about their antisemitism than anything else.” Sequel to the hugely successful The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, All The Broken Places is a moving story about grief, guilt and complicity. Needless to say, that with John Boyne at the helm, we’re treated to a storyline full of insight, from the ugliness of life through to the purity of love. Don’t miss this one!