Customer Reviews: Read 141 more reviews...
 disappointing October 9, 2008
lent this book to my daughter before I read it by which time I had seen the film. The film was moving and believeable - up to a point. Why his parents took so little interest in Bruno's coming and goings and why the maid takes little interest in his whereabouts is a plot device. Obviously the subject matter is harrowing and I cried at the film but not when reading the book which I found a bit of a letdown. Very simply written and perhaps more suitable for younger readers.
 Inaccurate and misleading account of the holocaust. October 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was intrigued about this book and bought it with the intention of giving it to my children, but thought I'd better read it first. I can remember reading "I am David" at the age of about 9 or 10 and being profoundly moved by it. I had hoped that this book would provoke a similar response, but was very disappointed.
Where to start? Apart from the style and writing itself, which I thought very poor, the book is highly inaccurate. We are expected to believe that the son of a high-ranking Nazi official has never heard of Hitler and doesn't know what "Jew" means. Worse than this, the author has taken complete liberty with the experience of children in Auschwitz. The idea that a 9-year-old child could survive in those conditions, and could spend every afternoon wandering off, consorting with the Commandant's son, sitting by an unguarded fence that people can crawl under beggars belief. These and countless other inaccuracies made me very angry.
I think what upset me most about this book is that it is being promoted as a "must-read" book about the holocaust, and for many children may be their first experince of holocaust writings. This "prettified" account of what life was like for a child in a death-camp may be taken as accurate by younger readers with little other experience/knowledge.
Personally, I wouldn't let my children read this. I'll let them read "I am David" and, when they are older, Anne Frank's Diary and Primo Levi's "If This is a Man". "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" shouldn't be on anyone's reading list, let alone a child's.
Spend your money on Primo Levi not this. October 3, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
What place does such a book have? John Boyne has written on one of the greatest tragedies of the last century without bothering to inform himself about the conditions in which children existed at Auschwitz. As such, this book does a grave disservice to those children who suffered and died. Its charm is a deceit that depends on an offensive suspense of reality and the known facts. No children were healthy at Auschwitz. They were dying; all of them - and it showed.
Don't spend money on this - spend it instead on Primo Levi and others like him who deliver the bolt to the heart and mind that is the reality of their suffering at Auschwitz and other similar camps.
Rubbish October 1, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I found the idea of the son of a high-ranking nazi befriending a Jewish death camp inmate interguing - for the whole of thirty seconds. Then the sheer implausibility of it all dawned upon me, and I read on only out of curiosity, to see just how far the author could convolute historical facts about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust to keep the wheels of this creaking shaggy dog dog of a fable from falling off.
Where to start? Adolf Hitler (The Fury, for christsakes) and Eva Braun pop in for tea. The narrator, Bruno, has never in his nine year life heard of or never seen a photo of the Fuhrer. Purleez! If anything, Nazism was a cult of youth. Young Bruno would have soaked up National Socialism by process of osmosis. He would have been a Hitler Youth, and all that entailed. To suggest that he didn't know what a Jew was is a joke. But for the book to 'work' we must swallow Bruno's total oblivion to everything going on around him.
Then to Auschwitz (or "Out With"). Firstly Shmuel, the nine year old jewish boy of the title, wouldn't lasted more than more than a day in the camp, let alone twelve months. He wouldn't have survived the firt train-side selection. But just supposing that by some miracle he did, Boyne then expects us to accept that Shmuel would have time to sit around by the barbed wire perimeter fence all day and chew the fat - in broad daylight - with the son of the camp commandant. I know that fiction requires a certain suspension of disbelief, but come on! Then we learn that ingress/access to the most notorious of the nazi death camps is simply a matter of holding up the bottom length of barbed wire fencing and crawling under it. One, you'd have been shot. Two you'd have been electrocuted.
Historical pedantry aside, this is just a badly written book. The language is dull, the dialogue is hopeless, the descrition is cursory at best, the ending is obvious (and poorly handled at that) and I was utterly unmoved by the whole sorry endevour. Rubbish
 Excellent September 23, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The title intrigued me - so I ordered a copy (hadn't realised it had been made in to a film). I could not put it down. Great story. Loved the author's style of writing, it suited the book. Would recommend this book to anyone and everyone!!
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