The Boy in Striped Pyjamas: John Boyne

 

 

Most of you have already read the book The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, but if you have not then you might want to pick this up after reading this review.– Read it with the mentality of a 9-year-old and not as an adult. It's not a BOOK for ADULT. Though it deals with Holocaust which is an adult subject to discuss but the entire story is from a child’s perspective and nothing violent has been mentioned anywhere in the book. Yet it is a heart wrenching painful story 

The story is from Bruno's perspective, who befriends a Jewish boy named Shmuel who is of his same  age living in the concentration camp. Both being naive about what's happening around , and why there is a fence in between them ( poverty, destitution vs High-class living) the book takes you to an innocent journey of 2 friends who enable themselves to transcend the division ( the fence) and cross over.

There are two words which have been used by the author to show the innocence of the children  who do not have any clue about what's going on: Fury and Outwith. This was mispronounced by Bruno throughout the book  Fury here is Furer which means Leader also referred to as Hitler the angry little man and Outwith as Auschwitz  the largest concentration and extermination camp in Poland.The tone of the book changes  slowly and Bruno starts to feel apprehensive  about the new place he started living with his family.

A highly recommended book for everyone especially for early teens.

Lines from the book:

• “We don’t have the luxury of thinking,” said Mother. “…Some people make all the decisions for us.”

• all of them—the small boys, the big boys, the fathers, the grandfathers, the uncles, the people who lived on their own on everybody’s road but didn’t seem to have any relatives at all—were wearing the same clothes as each other: a pair of grey striped pajamas with a grey striped cap on their heads.

• Bruno was sure that he had never seen a skinnier or sadder boy in his life but decided that he had better talk to him

ANY Holocust Recommendation for Young Adults?