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

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For the first decade of his book’s release, Boyne would frequently receive invitations to speak at Jewish community centres and Holocaust museums. He met with survivors who shared their stories with him. 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. Ultimately, the book motivated me to write an opera about the Shoah and integrate Holocaust education into my music,” Max said. “Any book capable of that is worthy of attention.” When Gretel witnesses a violent argument between Henry’s mother and his domineering father, she is faced with a chance to make amends for her guilt, grief and remorse and act to save a young boy. But by doing this she would be forced to reveal her true identity to the world and could cost her dearly. He would read many more Holocaust books during his 20s, from Primo Levi to Anne Frank to Sophie’s Choice, fascinated by how recently the atrocity took place. “How could something that seems like it should have happened, say, 1000 years ago – because the death count is so enormous and so horrifying – how could that happen so close to the time that I’m alive in?” he thought. “And if it could, then what’s to stop it happening again?”

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”. As overall awareness of the Holocaust has decreased among young people especially, Boyne’s novel has become a casualty of its own success. Holocaust scholars in the United Kingdom and United States have decried the book, with historian David Cesarani calling it “a travesty of facts” and “a distortion of history,” and the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre in London publishing a long takedown of the book’s inaccuracies and “stereotypes.” Gretel is a wonderfully complex character, and John Boyne does an incredible job of challenging us to like or dislike Gretel. She is a woman who can show incredible generosity yet show dislikeable traits. Gretel rises to action driven by concern yet can deliver harsh reactions. The remarkable aspect of Gretel’s story is deciding how culpable she was at fifteen to the inhumane compassionless environment of Auschwitz and the gnawing guilt that has been her constant companion for eighty years. “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.” If she was innocent, why was she living under an assumed name? Why had she kept her past hidden from everyone, including her son?

All The Broken Places

Boyne's latest novel, "All the Broken Places," is not so much a follow-up as a spinoff, and one that is aimed squarely at adults. Its narrator is 91-year-old widow Gretel Fernsby. "You're a dark horse," someone tells her. "Darker than most," is her reply. For Gretel is Bruno's sister. Haunted by his death and scarred by her father's war crimes, she has lived a life of grief and guilt, spending large parts of it on the move and under assumed names. Gretel Fernsby is a quiet woman leading a quiet life. She doesn't talk about her escape from Germany seventy years ago or the dark post-war years in France with her mother. Most of all, she doesn't talk about her father, the commandant of one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps. change their last name and identity. But the French bear the scars of this war and they are an observant lot. In time, Gretel and her mother must flee once again. Australia...... 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.

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. Her mother was a popular beauty until she became an alcoholic, and Gretel later enjoyed her own privilege of the power people confer on a pretty young woman. She could ask questions and flirt her way through any answers she didn’t want to give. Writing about the Holocaust is a fraught business and any novelist approaching it takes on an enormous burden of responsibility,” he tells the reader. “The story of every person who died in the Holocaust is one that is worth telling. I believe that Gretel’s story is also worth telling.”Gripping and well honed...Consumately constructed, humming with tension...A defence of literature's need to shine a light on the darkest aspets of human nature and it does so with a noveli's skill, precision and power The Guardian 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. I had mixed feelings (resistance to be honest) about reading “All The Broken Places”…. another ‘fiction’ story associated with The Holocaust…. 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. Clear your calendar. Get All the Broken Places and just don’t make any plans, other than to read and read and read.”

This is the valuable part of the novel: in Paris, in hiding, Gretel and her mother, an unrepentant Nazi, are shaved at a kangaroo court; she is attracted to violent sex with men who hate her because she is German; in Australia, she meets the psychopath she loved as a child, her father’s assistant, and they discuss their complicity; she becomes pregnant by a Jewish man. Boyne, you took a chance delving into this genre, but successfully left an impression of Greta and a reminder of all the victims who suffered. My heart now breaks in many places. Perfect. Not nosy, no uncomfortable questions. A younger (younger than Gretel) neighbour lives across the hall, and they are friendly, although Heidi is a bit gossipy, and her memory is getting shaky. Unfortunately, Mr Richardson has died and Gretel is hoping the new people will be as unintrusive as he was. But it tells the story from the perspective of a German who was directly implicated in the Holocaust. Throughout, Gretel reflects on her complicity in the Nazi regime, and her self-interest in hiding from authorities in the following years rather than trying to bring people like her father to justice. Missing from the book is any serious discussion of antisemitism as an ideology, and to what extent Gretel ascribes to it – though there is plenty of hand-wringing over postwar anti-German sentiment. 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." - John Irving, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The World According to Garp

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. I do feel it’s a positive contribution to the world and to Holocaust studies,” said Boyne, who estimates that he has personally spoken to between 500 and 600 schools about Striped Pyjamas.