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

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Kertész bemoaned the way Holocaust art devolves into the dutiful repetition of “certain words”. What are they? Boyne suggests a few contenders. How many times does All the Broken Places refer to the “truth”? Forty-two. Guilt? Thirty-six. Past? Thirty-four. Trauma, horror, and monster get ten uses each. The dialogue is leaden and expository: “My daddy’s not a monster”; “It doesn’t matter any more. It’s all in the past.” The narration is bloated and risible: “He was gone. Louis was gone. Millions were gone”; “I had witnessed too much suffering in my life and done nothing to help. I had to intervene.” I was privileged ton read an advance copy of this novel, the sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas . How does Gretel as a mother compare to her own mother? What similarities do you notice? What differences? How do you think Gretel’s feelings toward her own parents affected her ability to be a parent herself? You can’t prepare yourself for the magnitude and emotional impact of this powerful novel.”—John Irving Forbes, Malcom (2022-12-02). "Review: 'All the Broken Places,' by John Boyne". Star Tribune . Retrieved 2023-01-09.

When is a monster’s child culpable? Guilt and complicity are multifaceted. John Boyne is a maestro of historical fiction. You can’t prepare yourself for the magnitude and emotional impact of this powerful novel.” From the New York Times bestselling author John Boyne, a devastating, beautiful story about a woman who must confront the sins of her own terrible past, and a present in which it is never too late for bravery. I personally didn’t think the book was historically accurate-and it was my least favorite book by John Boyne….. All the Broken Places is the sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne’s bestselling 2006 novel about the Holocaust. You cannot begin to judge the sequel without the prequel, which tells the story of Bruno, the nine-year-old son of a nameless commandant of Auschwitz. Bruno is kindly: he is impervious to Nazism, and he calls the Führer the Fury. He loves exploring – his favourite book is Treasure Island – and, walking the fence between his home and the extermination camp, he meets a Jewish boy called Shmuel who is interned in Auschwitz, which Bruno calls “Out-With”. When Shmuel’s father disappears – he is dead, of course – Bruno offers to help him search. He climbs under the fence, borrows a striped uniform – his hair has already been shaved, due to lice – and is gassed alongside his friend. From the New York Times bestselling author John Boyne, a devastating, beautiful story about a woman who must confront the sins of her own terrible past, and a present in which it is never too late for braveryGretel, Bruno’s grieving, guilt-ridden sister, is the narrator. The reader gradually pieces together her story as the narrative switches confidently from present-day Mayfair, where for decades she has been living in a comfortable flat, to her peripatetic past. As she tries to escape the chaos of the end of the second world war, she grapples with her memories of Auschwitz, her parents and her own part in her brother’s death. These are vividly detailed, with a sense of revenge and retribution always lurking around the corner. This is not literature. As a grown-up sequel to children’s trash, All the Broken Places serves two roles. 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. Second, to serve as a sort of fan fiction for those peculiar adults who long for the comfort of a childhood favourite.

It’s very much a story about grief and guilt. About trauma, and attempting to escape the past. About running, but never being able to hide. But it's also a compassionate book, and Gretel is a deeply flawed but likeable character and we can see how she has been shaped by events. John Boyne is one of my favourite authors but strangely enough the I was one of the very few people who wasn’t completely blown away by his novel ‘The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas’. I did enjoy it but not as much as the wonderful ‘The Hearts invisible Furies’ or ‘Ladder to the Sky’ which were both masterpieces. ‘All the Broken Places’ is a sequel to ‘The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas’ and I was completely absorbed from the very start. We don’t need anyone to teach us how to recognise the barefaced devil; the danger is the insidious and gradual creep of violence into the civilised and everyday. This is what the philosopher Theodor Adorno’s dictum – “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” – warned of: art unable to recognise the break the Holocaust represented with the past, afraid to apprehend the failure of the civilising project. With this childish drivel in which the villains and victims come labelled and sorted, Boyne yet again seems immune to its lessons. Absolutely not. Children’s and young adult publishing is in the worst place it has been in my lifetime,” he says.In 1946, German born Gretel, and her mother escaped Poland for Paris, after a monumental event took place in their personal lives. Physically they may have fled their past, but psychologically, the shame and accompanying fear meant they would never really find peace. Kitsch has indeed come to dominate the field – from the Broadway adaptation of the Diary of Anne Frank to Schindler’s List. At the other end of the spectrum, masterpieces, often by survivors – Primo Levi, Paul Celan, Jean Améry – tend towards aesthetic and intellectual rigour, resisting closure and withholding comfort. Much of so-called “Holocaust fiction” is aimed at children and included in the “Holocaust curricula” that are mandatory in many jurisdictions, though fatally handicapped by a refusal to show children violence or even darkness. In the years since Kertész’s essay, however, a micro-genre of Holocaust fiction for adults has proliferated: The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Librarian of Auschwitz, The Violinist of Auschwitz. Unlike the children’s fare, these have no excuse for their optimism. There are few functioning families within the novel: everyone is affected by the reach of war, its tendrils stretching across the planet and through time. Warped parent/child relationships range from the apparently trivial (Gretel’s greedy son wants her to sell her luxurious flat) to the truly monstrous. Gretel’s mother, we learn, remained a true believer in nazism until the end. In the present-day plot strand, the film producer’s abuse of his family threatens to erupt into tragedy. Henry is a ghost-like figure, reminding Gretel both of her dead brother and of her failures as a mother.