The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

John Boyne

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

What happens when innocence is confronted by monstrous evil?

Nine-year-old Bruno knows nothing of the Final Solution and the Holocaust. He is oblivious to the appalling cruelties being inflicted on the people of Europe by his country. All he knows is that he has been moved from a comfortable home in Berlin to a house in a desolate area where there is nothing to do and no one to play with. Until he meets Shmuel, a boy who lives a strange parallel existence on the other side of the adjoining wire fence and who, like the other people there, wears a uniform of striped pyjamas.

Bruno’s friendship with Shmuel will take him from innocence to revelation. And in exploring what he is unwittingly a part of, he will inevitably become subsumed by the terrible process.

Review by Katie (150909) Rating (8/10)

Review by Katie
Rating 8/10
On the blurb of this book it states "...go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy named Bruno. (Though this isn't a book for nine-year-olds.)" This is the first thing that makes this book original from most other books aimed for younger readers; the protagonist is younger than the intended audience.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas follows Bruno as he and his family are forced to move home for his father's new job. Bruno soon discoverers a strange enclosure surrounded by a fence, where people walk about in their pyjamas all day. He befriends a boy on the other side and the reader follows them as they get to know each other, each unaware about what makes them so different to one another.

Being at the end of my teenage years, I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. Although it appears to be a children's book, the issues and themes dealt with are extremely adult, for example, religion and war. John Boyne deals with these themes in a very sensitive nature by having a child narrate the story.

This is an amazing, emotional story, one of the first children's stories to bring me to tears. The ending makes your heart stop and you are left thinking about it hours after you have finished. I would recommend this to children, teenagers and adults.
Katie (15th September 2009)