Reluctantly lopping a tall poppy

Boyne, John ~ The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

When I selected this book I thought
I fortunately read the book before the film’s marketing campaign (I don’t watch a lot of television and, yes, probably have been living on another planet) and my copy has the plain cover that doesn’t give away the theme.

50-word description
The story is told as an allegory about nine-year-old Bruno, who moves with his family far from the comforts of home. He meets a boy who lives on the other side of a high fence and forms a friendship despite differences that don’t often make sense to Bruno.

150-word review
Creating a fictional Holocaust tale with respect, imagination and a fresh perspective is a challenge reserved for the bold verging on foolhardy.

The author succeeds but with any great idea comes the risk of serious flaws. The last book by Boyne I read, The Thief of Time, was similarly ambitious (a man who can’t die and outlives generations of family) but fell over in its execution and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas follows suite.

Bruno’s character strays too far from innocent child to blinkered fool; with his father ranked highly in Hitler’s regime Bruno would have been a member of the Hitler Youth instead of professing ignorance about Jews. Bruno’s continued mispronunciation of vital German words (in English) grates and he would have been punished severely in a commandant’s household. The likelihood of meeting a boy on the other side of the fence with the freedom to meet daily for a year goes beyond suspension of disbelief.

But the author writes an absorbing story that emphasises the lesson of the allegory with a breathtaking finale. A colleague asked if I had seen the film, and I replied, “No, I don’t want to risk ruining my memories of the book,” because the flaws are outweighed by the originality of Boyne’s undertaking.

john boyne ~ the boy in the striped pyjamas

Found in
Home library B

Read
Jul 09

Links
Author’s web site
Frankston Library catalogue link

Rating
Flawed brilliance

This is book 27 of the project.