Lorraine's review

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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39999.The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51J4EV944RL._SL160_.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39999.The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7195.John_Boyne">John Boyne</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21506331?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 3 of 5 stars<br/>I like that this book is written from the perspective of the Commandant’s young son who doesn’t have any idea of the world he’s living in and the role his father has in it. We get to know Bruno as a sweet, well-behaved boy but who also has the self-centred and competitive nature that any child of a young age has. <br/> <br/>When he and his family are uprooted from their Berlin home and moved to Poland so his father can oversee a concentration camp, Bruno has to come to terms with the fact that he is miles away from everything and everybody he knows. On his first day he looks out his bedroom window and is shocked to see so many people on the other side of the fence, all wearing striped pyjamas. There are so many questions for Bruno to ask, but when he does, he never gets a full answer. I don’t think anybody feels they can talk freely about the situation, and how do you explain something so incomprehensible to an 8 year old innocent? <br/> <br/>Bruno considers himself to be a bit of an explorer but it is months before he even gets as far as visiting the bench that faces the house in the garden. When he does head further afield and meets Shmuel, he finds a ‘friend for life’ who he has so much in common with… same age, birthday, families who love them, friends at a home which they have been forced to leave behind … the only difference between them is the side of the fence they sit on. <br/> <br/>On the face of it, Bruno lives in ignorant bliss of what surrounds him but with all that he’s seen… The Fury’s visit to his house in Berlin, his Grandmother’s argument with his Father, Kotler’s treatment of the people in the striped pyjama’s, Pavel’s admission that he’s not really a waiter and Shmuel’s family going ‘missing’.. I think he begins to realise. Why else did he take so long to go exploring? Also, when Shmuel mutter’s “you don’t know what it’s like here” Bruno is “pretending he hadn’t heard that because then he wouldn’t have to answer”. <br/> <br/>This book is an easy and simple book to read, it is heart-warming and very sad. It never details what is happening, always just hinting at it, but you get to know so many characters and how each of them have been affected by the situations they’ve been put in. Bruno’s grandmother can’t forgive her son, Bruno’s father juggles family life with his responsibilities, Bruno’s mother succumbs to alcohol (and a possible affair with a younger man), Bruno’s sister enters her teenage years, Kotler tries to hide his past (was his father jewish?) and further his career, Pavel still holds on to his kindness and humanity in a place where he gets treated so inhumanely, and Shmuel tries to understand what’s going on, just like Bruno. <br/> <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1131511?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>