The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: A Fable (review)

Though nine-year-old Bruno knows his father is one of the most powerful men in Berlin, he has no idea what his father does, beyond the fact that his father is a soldier and that "the Fury," their leader, has great things in store for him. Bruno's confusion only deepens when his family moves from their spacious home to a gloomy place he believes to be called "Out-With," a house bordered by a fence that stretches as far as Bruno can see. Anxious to find out more about the people on the other side of the fence, lonely Bruno befriends Shmuel, a boy who shares his birthday. Despite the fact that they are separated from each other by a fence, the two become close—though Bruno cannot understand why Shmuel grows ever thinner, and Shmuel wonders how Bruno can be so kind when Bruno's father is so terrifying. The story, which subtitles itself "a fable," is crafted so that the Holocaust is never named outright until the appended author's note; clues abound, but they are deliberately muddied by Bruno's tendency to mispronounce words and misread signs. Once readers figure out that "Out-With" is Auschwitz, the narrative arc relies upon their knowing what the protagonist does not, as Boyne delicately balances Bruno's innocence with Shmuel's reticence. While Bruno and Shmuel's friendship is genuinely touching, the tendency to overplay their similarities pushes the story from poignant to preachy and the message is unsubtle. Moreover, sophisticated readers may pick up on the deliberately shrouded setting too quickly to have much patience with Bruno's implausible naïveté, while those who learn about the fence at Bruno's pace will have little preparation for the heft of the novel's ironic conclusion. Glatshteyn's Emil and Karl (BCCB 4/06), written during the period it depicts, makes the same point more compellingly; nevertheless, the care Boyne takes with character development, his measured hand with highly charged material, and his use of well-chosen detail makes this British import a sometimes haunting read.