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A review by mhinnen
All the Broken Places by John Boyne
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
John Boyne is an exceptional writer. All the Broken Places pulled me right in. Entering the past and present of 91-year-old Gretel, we learn her most shameful secrets. While Greta tries to make herself accountable, she never takes public responsibility and in fact, lives a pretty privileged life even while she is mentally tortured by the understanding that her 12-year-old self was part of a Nazi family and her father was hung for war crimes. She spends much of her life hiding.
The book is written seemingly sympathetic to Gretel . . . is it her fault that she was born into a family and lived a pleasant life on the other side of the fence where crimes against humanity were being committed? We see how her upbringing gave her a taste of power and eventually put her on the run. But she never really makes any reparation to the Jewish community or even meaningful repentance. Even the emotions she feels about her 9-year-old neighbor who is abused seem to be more about her brother who died during their time as Nazis than the millions who died because of her family's complicity. There are moments when we see her humanity, but at the end of the day, it seems that Hitler's charisma corrupted her soul.
I didn't realize until I read the author's note that this is a sequel to the Boy in the Striped Pajamas which I haven't read. Because of this, there are some gaps about what happened to her brother in All the Broken Places that I imagine are revealed in the first novel.
The book is written seemingly sympathetic to Gretel . . . is it her fault that she was born into a family and lived a pleasant life on the other side of the fence where crimes against humanity were being committed? We see how her upbringing gave her a taste of power and eventually put her on the run. But she never really makes any reparation to the Jewish community or even meaningful repentance. Even the emotions she feels about her 9-year-old neighbor who is abused seem to be more about her brother who died during their time as Nazis than the millions who died because of her family's complicity. There are moments when we see her humanity, but at the end of the day, it seems that Hitler's charisma corrupted her soul.
I didn't realize until I read the author's note that this is a sequel to the Boy in the Striped Pajamas which I haven't read. Because of this, there are some gaps about what happened to her brother in All the Broken Places that I imagine are revealed in the first novel.