The Boy In Striped Pyjamas
The Boy in Striped Pyjamas
by John Boyne
240 pages
Fiction, History- Holocaust
David Fickling Books
This book isn't really about a boy in striped pyjamas, it is, but really it isn't. It is really about the other side of the coin, and portraying a picture to the reader that will never be forgotten. I have thought about how to do this book review, and what to include and I have arrived at the conclusion that the less the possible reader knows before snatching up The Boy in Striped Pyjamas the better.
Even the back of the audiobook I have aims to be extremely vague, saying they "think that it would spoil the listening (or reading)" in the giving away of this plot and story. I completely agree that this is a book that you need to read cold-turkey. Reviews are good in most cases, but not in this one. Because each time you read a review, a little chip of the innocence of Bruno is chipped away, because you know what he doesn't even know of his father. Oh yes, that will surely happen even as the novel unfolds, but I think I need to let the author chip away- because he does it with an incredible disarming perfection.
I walked away from this book with tears in my eyes, and fire in my heart. What could bring about this type of treatment of other people? The Boy in Striped Pyjamas just cannot be reviewed with accuracy without being of detriment to the surprise and intrigue of the book. I will not ruin this read for you, I wouldn't dream of it. This is one of the best books I have ever read, if that isn't enough to get you to read it...I won't jeopardize the impact of it on your life for a good review at B&b ex libris. This is one you just have to read! A perfect recipient of my Stellar Five Chicken Book Award. Yep, all the cluckin' is really worth a read of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I bet you'll cluck too!!
Spoiler alert!!!
If you want to read the novel cold turkey, you should stop reading here. Go, enjoy the novel and read the rest of this after.
Author John Boyne lecture/interview:
At the end of the audio book there was an amazing interview with author John Boyne, the following words are not direct quotes, but I did jot them down as I listened to the interview, I tried to stick as close to what the authors actual words were, but these are more like scattered notes after listening to an amazing lecture. I just love them so much that I have to share with you:
There is only one normal judgment to come away with when you think of the holocaust.
A story placed at a terrible location, at a terrible time. But this is a novel. Any story requires the willing suspension of disbelief, this story is like a nightmare and the reader can feel what is coming. The older you are, the more you know and the more fearful and real it seems. To come away from the book, annoyed by the different parts is thus minimizing the bigger questions that this novel raises is a failure to see the impact of this atrocity on us as a humanity.
The Boy in Striped Pyjamas shows a juxtaposition of extreme evil and extreme naietivity. Also to deal with the complacency of the people, during the 1940's. Groups of jewish people were walking through local villages, starving and being tormented these people were known as Hitler's willing executioners. They didn't step in, didn't try to bring change. Would you have done anything to stop it? You'd like to think you would, but millions of people just like you were caught up in the complacency and didn't make a move to stop anything happening on the other side of the fence.
John Boyne hopes that this is a starting point for children that they will want to stand up and say, why did that happen? And that then they will want to read more about the severity when they are old enough.
Movie Adaptation of The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas: I haven't seen this yet, but I a dying to. I am waiting on my husband (B) to read the book, which is hard for him to do when he has a month left in the completion of his masters thesis. Soon I will get to see it.
The Book Thief
The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
560 Pages
YA Literature, Holocaust
Stellar Five Chicken Award Book
I knew this was going to be good before I started reading it. Sometimes that makes me jaded and I don't enjoy a book as much as I could have, it is almost as if it has been ruined by expectations of how it was going to be good and if it isn't good in those ways I am let down and disappointed. The Book Thief was good enough, in all areas that that wasn't a problem, it was well rounded and real, honest and humble and yet Zusak took those leaps that jumped it into greatness. It could have been just good, it covered a strong subject matter and that could have been just good enough, but I felt he pushed beyond all that and catapulted The Book Thief to go down in history.
I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so cover your ears and hum if you want to read this and you haven't read it yet. No, I won't spoil it. But one thing that I can tell you is that the omniscient narrator is death, or an angel of death. I thought that sounded too spooky before reading it but it really isn't. It is real, it is life- that death comes to us all.
Spoiler
I couldn't and still cannot get over the ending, or the last phrase in the book, "I am haunted by humans" (p. 550) I loved what this conveyed to me, what it made me understand. Several times throughout the book the narrator speaks of thinks that should be beautiful as ugly, and he uses the word 'ugly' in strange ways throughout The Book Thief. I came to understand thoguh, that this last phrase of the book is both good and bad, he is haunted by our beauty and attracted to the good that we can do, and also by the harm we cause each other, the pain.
Death is what we tend to fear, death is scary and cold but for me the point of the book was that what are fellow humans can do to us is worse than death, worse than uncertainty. I thought it was also interesting because death is attracted to humans, he has a job in life and has a need to perform when death comes to people, he is programmed and just does that. The beautiful side of humans is that we do have a free choice, a will and we get to make the call between walking in beauty and walking in brutality. It makes both extremes so much more severe because we do not HAVE to do either, we choose good, or bad and our choices affect those around us even if we don't want them to.
Spoiler end
The perfect ending to me is that which Zusak leaves unsaid- to have an ending where you just close the book sit in silence and think of all the immensity of it all. That is what a good book, great book should do to you. That is why I believe The Book Thief is one of the best books I have ever read, I'd say in my top 5 now. And that is saying a lot coming from me, since I abhor jumping on any sort of bandwagon. Heaven help me!
What about you do you automatically try to dislike things that EVERYONE else likes? Or do you just not read them or watch them? I still haven't seen the Titanic (yep the one with Leo DiCaprio) I am stubborn, and the only reason I haven't see it is that, well I didn't want to jump on that bandwagon!! (I was much more hardcore in high school!) Do you do that or is it just me?
I give it my biggest two thumbs up, and all the clucking it deserves with Dreadlock Girl's own Stellar Five Chicken Book Award!
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