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

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Its major themes are guilt, complicity and the apparently inescapable cycles of grief arising from world-shaking events. I’ve also won 4 Irish Book Awards, and many international literary awards, including the Que Leer Award for Novel of the Year in Spain and the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize in Germany. In spite of herself, Gretel can't help but begin a friendship with the little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back memories she would rather forget.

All The Broken Places is a compelling read dealing with culpability, responsibility and Gretel’s life-long guilt, but the novel is derailed by Boyne’s evasive, over-the-top ending. This novel, this exceptional, layered and compelling story,is built on modernhistory and all of us people who live it.

First, to demonstrate that Boyne definitely did not think that the Germans were innocent, definitely knew they were “complicit” and “guilty” and that history is “complicated”, etc, thanks very much. With his latest treacly tome All the Broken Places – complete with title so maudlin it preempts all mockery – Boyne has gifted us with a Holocaust novel so self-indulgent, so grossly stereotyped, so shameless and insipid that one is almost astonished that he has dared .

A child like Shmuel would not be at liberty to walk the fence, and his anger is so muted it is nonexistent. I think then if somebody does, I think that says more, frankly, about their antisemitism than anything else. She occasionally sees her son, guarding her privacy, ensuring she never gets really close to anyone, intent on keeping her secrets deeply buried.Her preference for privacy means there’s less chance of anyone finding out about her life during the Second World War, that is until 9 year old Henry moves into the apartment below hers!