A really good read - All the Broken Places
It should tell you all you need to know about this powerful, intelligently insightful, grippingly written book that I consumed it in just two sessions at a time when I was feeling properly under the weather. Not even an unpleasantly persistent cough and sore throat, or the need to be blowing my nose every five minutes (apologies if that’s TMI) could detract from how engrossing I found this follow-up to his worldwide best-seller, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, by multi-award winning novelist John Boyne.
All the Broken Places is a story about the inescapable corrosiveness of guilt and the far-reaching repercussions of grief, rooted in one of the darkest periods in human history and spreading right up to the present day.
The book’s narrator, Gretel Fernsby, is in her nineties when we first meet her, leading a comfortably quiet life in the elegant surroundings of an upmarket apartment block in central London, where she has resided for many decades. But Gretel’s peaceful day-to-day existence hides a past that is ridden with horror and anguish, and the arrival of a new family in the flat below hers turns out to be the trigger that will not only unleash agonising memories, but force her to confront the consequences of the choices she has made throughout her life.
Gretel’s story unfolds in parts consisting of parallel chapters, with ones from periods during her past alternating with ones from the present day. Through them all, her uncompromising, clear-sighted narration engages the reader, and draws us inexorably into her experiences as a child, growing up in Germany, then Poland when her father, a high-ranking Nazi officer is put in charge of Auschwitz, the most notorious of all the Holocaust death camps.
What happens to her and her family there results in an emotional and physical legacy that afflicts her and her mother when when they escape to Paris at the end of the war. After the death of her mother, Gretel travels to Australia, where, even so far away, she finds she cannot escape the haunting horrors of her past, and then to London, where her experiences continue to reap devastating consequences.
In the present day chapters, Gretel reluctantly becomes involved with the young boy in the flat below, and the horrifying secret that is being concealed by his family proves the catalyst to a choice Gretel is forced to make between what she’s prepared to do to save him and her desire to protect her own safety.
You don’t have to have read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - which was written for children, sold 11 million copies, and subsequently adapted into a feature film, a play, a ballet and an opera - but the way the two stories thread together is all the more impactful if you have.
An unexpected twist towards the end of All the Broken Places adds another layer of emotional impact to a book that is as uncomfortable and difficult as it is compelling and unforgettable.
Other great books you’ll enjoy
The Herd - parenting and freedom of choice collide
Go as a River - an exploration of the savage and healing power of nature
This is Not a Pity Memoir - a devastating and yet wildly uplifting tale of loss and love
