Books
by John Boyne
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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas |
The story is told through the perspective of Bruno, a young boy, who meets a Jew through a concentration camp fence. Because he's innocent and oblivious to everything going on, you have to work out what is happening from what you know. It's a good read for all ages but perhaps even more touching for younger children, who don't know much about that time. However, I felt it wasn't quite as brilliant as everyone says.
(Eloise May - bwl 48 November 2008) |
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The Heart's Invisible Furies |
Although some of the subject matter and behaviour are confronting, Boyne's writing conveys with his trademark empathy and humour, some of the pathos and gritty reality of life and love in Ireland in the first half of the 20th century. This is contrasted and balanced with possiblities allowed in a more liberal culture, not all of them desirable, which Ireland slowly embraced decades later. His characters are vivid and memorable, and while their escapades might be unique, their experiences are essentially universal, and universally moving.
(Margaret Teh - bwl 100 Spring 2021) |
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The Heart's Invisible Furies |
In 2008 (aged 14), I reviewed Boyne's 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' (bwl 48) and was not very impressed, perhaps due to all the hype! This book had the opposite impact. A daunting six hundred page read, engrossing from middle to end. Overall, I adored this story of teenage pregnancy; growing up; adoption; religion; gay rights; the AIDS pandemic; and politics in Ireland and beyond. I was in Dublin in 2015 in the run-up to the gay marriage referendum and this story hit home - I imagined I lived in a "modern" society, so it's harrowing to discover the history of Ireland, geographically next-door to the UK, and to realise that this sort of oppression occurred in my life-time and is still prevalent in the West.
(Eloise May - bwl 101 Summer 2021) |
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The House of Special Purpose |
Russia 1915: a sixteen-year old boy saves a member of the Imperial family from an assassin's bullet and becomes bodyguard to the Tzar's heir; now in his eighties, living in exile, he is recounting his story. The fate of the Romanovs and especially of Anastasia, the Tzar's youngest daughter, haunted the 20th C - never mind we now know their fate - Boyne, the master story-teller, unfolds, apart from a few caveats, a gripping saga of what-might-have-been.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 104 Spring 2022) |
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The Thief of Time |
Due to a quirk of nature Matthieu Zela is over 250 years old, the ageing process having been arrested in his 40s. Alternate chapters chronicle his life today and his previous experiences, ranging from the French revolution to 19th century Rome to Hollywood. His only enduring family is a series of nephews who all die young , a chain he is desperate to break. Sounds confusing? Not so but a cleverly structured page turner with a fitting ending.
(Sue Pratt - bwl 105 Summer 2022) |
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