Review of All the Broken Places by John Boyne

All the Broken Places is a novel that is linked to Boyne's novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The exploration of gray areas between good and evil was the most intriguing aspect to me as our elderly protagonist faced a difficult past.

Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby is living out her days in a posh flat in London. She's friends with her younger across-the-hall neighbor Helen, who is coping with dementia, and Gretel's three-times-married-and-divorced grown son lives in the city, but otherwise Gretel keeps to herself.

When a couple and young son move into the flat below her, Gretel begins to worry that the man of the house is harming his wife and child, and her hesitant involvement leads him to discover elements about Gretel's youth in Berlin that she never wanted to face again.

Haunted by the past and threatened in the present, Gretel shapes the novel with disturbing memories from her youth that alternate with an increasingly messy, secretive present day. Gretel had been doing just fine skating through her days pushing down her guilt and her complicated past, but it seems she'll have to face it all at long last.

The evil masterminds--and soldiers carrying out their missions--of World War II fade in contrast to the responsibility and haunting we witness as Gretel relives her personal history. Her age of 12 at the end of the war is perfectly straddling the status of unaware childhood and responsible young adulthood and a capability for action and objection. The situation allows for an intriguing gray area rather than an easy, black-and-white sense of right-and-wrong.

The present-day "bad guy" is a gleefully rotten, abusive, sinister character who is easy to detest. Gretel's unwanted bond with the young boy downstairs brings memories flooding back from her own childhood, and her resistance to his bond and then her deep loyalty to him lead to a ending that is centered around revenge, consequences, and justice.

More about John Boyne

John Boyne is the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and this novel is linked to that one. I found that book somewhat frustrating in the suspension of disbelief necessary for the plot to work, but the premise was also horrifyingly fascinating.