I found this book interesting and fast moving enough. I enjoyed the modern story line especially, although there were pieces of it that felt unnecessary. Why all the mystery surrounding the new neighbors? Why were the son/grandson pushing so hard to get the older women to move out? None of that really drove the story forward.

The biggest problem of course was the fact that despite saying the opposite in the introduction, Boyne is absolutely trying to paint a sympathetic portrait of this former nazi. And it works, by the end you’re absolutely rooting for Gretl, but it feels wrong. Taking all the unbelievable parts of the story out, even… she is absolutely the heroine of the story and we are meant to feel that justice has been served because a few times she shows us she felt guilty about it. I just think that especially with all the criticisms regarding BITSP, this felt pretty tone deaf.

When I started reading, I was unaware of the relation to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. As I recognized the scenario, I came to appreciate the alternative viewpoints of both the child she was and the grown woman she became. The confusion, ongoing trauma, limited understanding, and finally effort to make amends provide thought provoking moments.

no one does historical fiction like John Boyne. Set in London, the story goes back and forth between Nazi Germany and present day London. Another great one.

I have read so many stories about the Holocaust. And all, needless to say, were very disturbing and haunted me long after I'd read the last page. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas", was one of those stories. That John Boyne chose to revisit some of those same characters was quite a bold choice. In fact, " All the Broken Places", his latest novel, is a brilliant take on that awful period of time in history.

Very few novels have been about the families of Nazis, who have had to live long lives knowing of the actions of their famous parent. Here we meet two of those family members; a wife who was arguably complicit in the actions of her husband, and a daughter, a 12 year old child, who at first barely understood what was happening in the camps, until her father had her witness it from inside the wire fence.

Should this daughter bear the guilt of her parents? Should she continue to blame herself for doing nothing? Was she at all culpable?

There are so many twists and turns to this story, as we visit Gretel's life, during and right after WW II, and even later, when she is her 90's and living in England. This is a very interesting tale. Well written, well plotted, and emotional on so many levels. I truly loved it and highly recommend it.

I was one of many who viewed "Boy in the Striped Pajamas" as deeply problematic so I picked up this sequel with a fair amount of skepticism. Overall, I greatly preferred this sequel, geared at adults, to the YA book about the Holocaust. As John Boyne writes: it's a book about the grief we carry and the responsbility we hold for the actions of our family. I ended up enjoying this quite a bit.

A powerful look at guilt and and all its manifestations. Gretel's father, a Nazi stalwart, ran a concentration camp in Germany during World War II. Gretel and her mother manage to escape Germany, and, ultimately, escape facing the consequences of what transpired during the war.
The plot, itself, was a bit contrived but I believe the author's purpose of raising important questions of the past and future give rise to much introspection. The idea of responsibility echoes throughout these pages. Gretel was a 12 year old child during this time so to what extent is she culpable? If she could be excused initially from having a part in the atrocities her father instituted, what future responsibility was expected of her and others? What can be done so history doesn't repeat itself which are all relevant questions of today.
I felt no sympathy for Gretel but if other readers might, then the author didn't accomplish what I imagined he wished to do. I interpreted the author's intentions as to attempting to decipher the horrific role and responsibilities of those involved with the Holocaust. It provided an excellent springboard in examining these profound questions.

So I knew going into this some of the flack that Boyne received for his portrayal of Nazis in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as well as historical inaccuracies that many Holocaust historians found contention with. However, much like that novel this one was moving and poignant. Ultimately, it spoke of the intricacies of guilt passed down throughout our lives - our past is inescapable, no matter how much we try to run and/or hide from it.

3.5 out of 4.

This book is so, so bad. As a human being, I'm horrified, and as Jew I'm offended. Someone take words away from John Boyne. This book is terrible, in both craft and plot. I sincerely hope no one reads it hoping for a serious interrogation on the morality of good and evil, it's just Nazi apologia. If you are Jewish and read this book, you might be entitled to compensation!

To give Boyne credit, this novel features a much more robust story than it's prequal, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. He claims in his afterward that his goal was not to make Gretel a sympathetic character, but to raise questions about the extent to which Nazi children like Gretel are responsible for the actions of their parents.

The story is compelling, but there are many ways in which All the Broken Places replicates the issues that many readers (including the Auschwitz Memorial Museum) find in the first book. There is more grey area when it comes to Gretel, but in the end this is a book about how hard poor Gretel's life was because of the atrocities committed by her father: readers are absolutely meant to sympathize with her. There are no main Jewish characters, no real exploration of Jewish suffering. Most of Gretel's emotional torment stems from Bruno's death (not Jewish deaths), and there are a handful of moments that indulge in nostalgia for the good ole days of the Reich.

John Boyne's All the Broken Places adds layers to his previous work The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. This volume updates the reader on the post-war life of Bruno's sister, Gretel, which includes quite a bit of guilt and the need for reinvention to escape from her past and to evade persecution. While this was a good story, and I was engaged with the characters, I'm not sure we needed an update on a perpetrator of the Holocaust. The book focuses on the life of one such perpetrator, and, while it was a good story, should it be one that's published in 2o22? Why must the gaze fall on them and not one of the 6 million victims of the Holocaust. All this is to say, to publisher and author, that maybe such stories can be conjured in the mind and on the page, but maybe they shouldn't be published.

Thank you Net Galley for the ARC.

WOW! John Boyne has outdone himself again! While, 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas' is still my favorite Boyne book, this one is right up there. I did not know that it was a sequel to the previously mentioned book, so as I read, I wondered if Gretel's brother was the boy from the previous book.

I also found it interesting that the point of view was that of a German who lived after the Holocaust, as most books are from Jewish survivors. Excellent book!

A morally questionable, yet gripping read about a woman whose family actively condoned concentration camps and the life she led after. Told in two time periods, current day and the other starting roughly after Gretel leaves after the end of the war, the reader follows her decisions as she attempts to distance herself from her family narrative and complicity. Gretel is in the morally grey area, both acknowledging the atrocities of her past while also trying to just forget it and move on. A very nuanced look into what it means to live with lifelong guilt, as well as trying to overwrite your own history.

Gretel Fernsby has a secret, one that she’s been keeping for most of her long life. it torments her. She knows that, if it were to get out, the secret has the potential to ruin her life and her son’s life. In All the Broken Places, John Boyne’s sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, we find Gretel at the age of 91, still guarding her secret. When a new family moves into the flat below hers, Gretel is pushed to act at the risk of her ability to hide her parentage and her father’s crimes from the world.

Readers who’ve read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas will already know what Gretel’s secret is. If you haven’t, it doesn’t take long for Gretel to reveal in chapters that flashback to 1946, in Paris, and the early 1950s, in Sydney, Australia, that she is the daughter of one of the commandants of Auschwitz. Before her brother disappeared into the camp, Gretel was a true believer. She wore the uniform of a Nazi girl’s group and never questioned what her father or the lieutenant were doing in Auschwitz. After the war, Gretel struggles to come to terms with her own part in the Nazi death machine. Yes, she was a child, but is she culpable for her father’s crimes? I don’t know that Gretel finds peace so much as she finds a way to compartmentalize away all of the things she can’t resolve.

In the present, Gretel is a wealthy woman (thanks to her now-deceased historian husband). She lives in a posh flat in a very desirable part of London. (Her son pesters her to sell up so that he can have the money.) Gretel doesn’t want to leave. She also doesn’t want anything to change, so the arrival of a new family in the downstairs flat troubles her. She grows even more troubled when she learns that the wife and son are terrorized by an abusive, controlling, monstrous husband. Being on the periphery of terrible acts—involved but not involved—mirrors the position Gretel was in when she was younger. She might have a chance, this time, to do something right.

I continue to be fascinated by books that show how people (fictional or otherwise) wrestle with their consciences in the face of what is right and what is possible. A lot of us believe that we would resist or actively fight oppression, systemic crimes, and so on. We certainly like to think so. Fiction like All the Broken Places pushes us to really think about what we might do if we were in Gretel’s position in a more realistic way. Could we really stand up to parents we idealize? What could we do against the full force of the Nazi regime? Also, these stories pose questions about how we live with ourselves when we fail to do what is right (even if doing what’s right is impossible). How do people withstand an ocean of guilt, regret, and self-recrimination? Would we hide our secrets like Gretel? Would we try to atone?

Readers who enjoy impossible ethical dilemmas will love All the Broken Places.

Speaking as a Boyne fan, this book did more than hold my attention. It’s a simple piece of narration and yet its moral complexity is compelling . Gretel is a pleasingly dislikeable character and her choices require the reader to project. Except for her last choice, that is. I haven’t read the preceding novel in this sequence and it didn’t inhibit my enjoyment.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for this advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review. All opinions here are my own and this review will appear on goodreads.
First let me say that I am unsure if I’ve ever read Striped Pajamas or only knew the controversy surrounding it and I have never seen the movie.
My review will be broken in two parts.
As for the storyline and the way the book way laid out in dual timelines that complimented one another (as in, the bits from the present and past related in some way), I enjoyed this. Instead of saying “history repeats itself,” we see how the past decisions influence our present conditions and beliefs. The story to me was engaging and paced well. There are surprises that unfurl throughout.
I was frustrated however that the author was working so hard to get the reader to sympathize with nazis. But perhaps the goal was to open the conversation. Gretel was a young girl when these things happened. Would you speak out against your own father? Would you know what to do? I felt nothing for Gretels mother but loathing. Many of the characters left me with a feeling of contempt. But at the end, in self reflection, what would I have done? What could I have done?
I’m not sure how to rate this one. I think this one is going to wade back into controversy. I think books will be sold. Taken as a fiction, I liked it a lot, I wish there was more warning in the book. This is not the book for studying the period, but it will open discussion about the human side of the German children during the holocaust and the grief, shame, and fear that they must have carried forever.

Well, wow. Having never read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas I was worried that this would fall flat for me. But I love John boyne so I decided to give it a go and, well, wow. This was pretty heavy, with a handful of truly traumatic scenes. Add in child abuse and and there you have all my triggers. But I still really enjoyed it. He’s so good, at writing people and feelings and he’s good even when his story is hard. Basically the story of Gretel, whose father was in a high ranking official of the Third Reich & also in charge of a concentration camp.

All the Broken Places is an incredibly powerful novel telling the story of what happens after the war is over through the eyes of a woman whose father ran one of the camps. Gretel and her mother first try to hide in Paris but are discovered and humiliated for their role in the holocaust, then once her mother is dead Gretel tries to live in Australia, but ultimately lives the rest of her years in England where she marries, has a child. She lives quite well until the age of 92 with the war on her mind every single day.. She keeps her true identity from people, feeling incredibly guilt and culpable for her families actions.
Perfect for book clubs because of the novels many themes and conversations this will generate. At the age of 12, how liable is Gretel for her fathers actions? How can she still love him? Should she have surrendered herself and others for what they have done? How does she see her father’s and Hitlers actions now? What is her personal feeling about the war and the Jewish people now? As a girl she was able to not quite see what was happening in front of her, but when she confronts violence as an old woman how does she handle what’s going on?
Told from a fascinating, little used and unusual vantage point Gretel is a character not to be pitied, not to be hated, but full of human complexities.
I’ve often wondered how the people of Germany could turn a blind eye to what Hitler espoused, but it’s becoming all too apparent how this happens in todays politics so I find All the Broken Places to be a perfect novel for right now.
My only complaint is that the chapters are not marked as to what is in the past and what is present day which becomes confusing. I started to read a paragraph thinking it was present day and it was in the past and vice versa. I think every chapter should be labeled at the top.

All the Broken Places by John Boyne was …WOW. I don’t give out a ton of five-star ratings on Goodreads, where I keep track of all the books I read, but All The Broken Places was definitely a five-star read!

He is one of my favorite authors, not only does he write beautifully, but the stories are filled with emotion and you cannot help but become invested in the lives of the characters.

I could never bring myself to read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which is the prequel to this book. I felt that would be too emotional and hard to read, as is the case with many novels about World War 2.

This story is told from the perspective of Gretal, the sister to the brother from Striped Pajamas. She’s 91 years old and is nervous about some new neighbors in her apartment building. She hopes there aren’t any kids. As she laments over the neighbors, meets them, and bonds with the young boy, she is also reliving the horrors of the 1940s. She must come to terms with things from her past as she tries to do the right thing in the present.

1946. Three years after a cataclysmic event which tore their lives apart, a mother and daughter flee Poland for Paris, shame, and fear at their heels, not knowing how hard it is to escape your past.

Nearly eighty years later, Gretel Fernsby lives a life that is a far cry from her traumatic childhood. When a couple moves into the flat below her in her London mansion block, it should be nothing more than a momentary inconvenience. However, the appearance of their nine-year-old son Henry brings back memories she would rather forget.

Faced with a choice between her own safety and his, Gretel is taken back to a similar crossroads she encountered long ago. Back then, her complicity dishonoured her life, but to interfere now could risk revealing the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting.

I cannot recommend this book more, it was so good from start to finish and a definite MUST READ.

This is out now, don’t miss it.

This was an absorbing, often disturbing story, that I enjoyed reading. I don’t tend to gravitate toward Holocaust-related books, probably because of the difficult subject matter, but I was interested in hearing from a character who had such a complicated history in that time (and since). Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pamela Dorman Books for an early digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

I read and watched 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas' back in 2019, and I honestly preferred the movie over the book. However, I've never read an adult book by John Boyne, and this one changed the game. It definitely wasn't perfect, but I read this 400-page book in less time than I normally read a 400-page book.

This follows Gretal, the sister of Bruno, and her journey after the tragedy that happened to her family in 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas'. It flops between when she was younger and current day (2022) when she's ninety-years-old.

It's hard to decide if you want to be on Gretal's side or not. If you took away the horrific things her father did, Gretal would be a wonderful person. She's strong-willed, smart, and funny. She stands up for herself and the people around her who are mistreated. Gretal can't take back what happened in the past, but she tries so hard to make up the best she can in the present. I was really happy that she found love in her lifetime, even though it wasn't an easy journey.

I have two gripes about this book that caused me to lower my rating.

1. The characters never acted like their age. The way Gretal spoke as a young adult and a ninety-year-old was no different. For me, that's hard to believe. This made the dialogue feel a bit robotic at times.
2. The headers for each chapter didn't tell you what year you were in. The only time it tells you is at the beginning of each section of the book. You just have to read on and figure it out. It wasn't hard to tell, but sometimes I'd forget which one I stopped at. That might be a "me" problem.

Regardless, this book was wonderful. There are so many twists and turns that I didn't see coming. A lot of trigger warnings for this one. I'd also recommend reading 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas' even though I don't think you necessarily have to. If you don't read it, I'd watch the movie at least. I'm so happy I was able to read this early. Gretal is up at the top as one of my favorite fictional characters. I definitely need to pick up more novels by Boyne.

**My reviews on IG and Goodreads will be up later today (8/31/22).