Nine-year-old Bruno lives in a big house in Berlin and is not at all happy when the household is packed up and he, his mother, his older sister and the servants are forced to travel by train to a new house, far away in the desolate countryside. He misses the bustling city, the house with such a great banister for sliding down, his grandparents, his friends, even his school. At the new house, there is no one to play with, just a small garden and a tall fence in the distance, reaching as far as the eye can see. He tries to convince his parents that they need to move back, but is hopeful that his new exile will only last for maybe a month.
Of course, Bruno is wrong, and he is forced to settle into his new home. His busy father has uniformed soldiers coming in and out of his office all the time, and doesn’t really have time for his wife or children any more. Going off on his own to explore the countryside, Bruno walks along the tall barbed wire fence and one day meets a skinny boy, dressed in what appears to be striped pyjamas. The boy’s name is Shmuel and Bruno discovers that he too is nine years old. Not only that, they share the same birthday. Bruno doesn’t tell his family about his new friend and keeps sneaking back to the fence to talk to his new friend, who seems strangely reluctant to tell Bruno too much of the details of his life. As the boys’ friendship develops, Bruno becomes more and more curious about Shmuel’s life behind the fence. When he decides to crawl under a loose section of the fence, it has unexpected consequences.
I’m unsure of who the intended target audience for the book is. Because it’s written from the POV of a naive and sheltered child, it may seem like a children’s book. But because of the subtle ways in which the story is told, you need knowledge of World War II and the Holocaust to really understand what is going on. A child wouldn’t understand that “The Fury” is Hitler and “Out With is in fact, Auschwitz-Birkenau, probably the most infamous and well-known of all of the Nazi’s death camps. Apparently, the author wrote the first draft of the book in about two and a half days, and intends it as a “fable” about the war. Which may describe why the story seems a bit too simplistic.
Full review on my blog.
I didn’t care much for it either; I thought it was unrealistic and manipulative.
Having said that, it does have a major redeeming feature: my students (the ones aged 12-15) absolutely love this book, and I’m a fan of anything that gets them reading. So perhaps that’s the target audience?
I borrowed my copy from our school library, where the librarian says it’s frequently read and enjoyed by our kids (also 12-15). So I suspect you’re right, and that for teens without a complex knowledge into the time period and the complexities of the Holocaust issue, it can be a good introduction. And it’s certainly an easy read, which is what a lot of my pupils need.
Jr. Cannonballer Abby Awesomeness has been assigned this as summer reading. So I’ll be interested to see if she enjoys it more than you.
I suspect that having a history degree, with a more than above avarage interest in World War II when I was a teenager, makes me a very critical reader of this book. I know pupils of mine have enjoyed the book, and I can see why it would be an interesting entry point into the conflict. It just seemed a bit too simplistic and naivistic to me. Good luck to Abby Awesomeness. :)