Book Review
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Author: John Boyne
No. Pages: 216
ISBN: 0-385-60940-X
Publisher: David Fickling Books
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is about Bruno, a nine year old boy; he lives in a five storey house with his mother, his father, his 12-year-old sister Gretel and also many servants. Bruno doesn’t know anything about his father’s job except that he wears a fancy uniform and that the Fury has big things in mind for him. One day the very important Fury visits them and from this Bruno’s father gets a new uniform, his title changes to Commander and Bruno finds himself, his family and all of his servants moving to a new home at a place called Out-With. When Bruno gets there he feels very sad as he has left his school, Karl, Daniel and Martin, his three best friends for life, his house, his grandparents and the street life of Berlin, with its cafes, fruit and vegetable stalls. His new house at Out-With is much smaller, full of soldiers and there is no one to play with. From his bedroom window Bruno occasionally notices a town of people dressed in striped pyjamas separated from him by a wire fence. When he asks his father who those people are, he responds that they aren’t really people, they are the Jews. One day, Bruno follows the wire fence separating off the area where these people live from his house. He spots a dot in the distance on the other side of the fence that when he gets closer, he sees it’s a boy. Excited by what could be a friend, Bruno introduces himself. The Jewish boy’s name is Shmuel. Almost every day, they meet at the same place and talk. Eventually, for many reasons, Bruno decides to climb under the fence and explore Shmuel’s world and the way he lives.
I didn’t really enjoy this book because I found it very hard in some parts to understand and follow to begin with. I found it quite annoying how it would say something like ‘I used to live in a room with eleven other people before I came here and one boy Luka, who kept on hitting me even when I did nothing at all wrong’ and then later on in the story if it came back to it, it would describe it all over again and keep repeating it each time.
I liked this book because it had lots of really good description in it and also the story line is really good as it shows how some people really do live or used to live. It is a story about a very different friendship as most people think of playing with a friend and not just talking through a wire fence to them which is really cool.
I gave this book a rating of two and a half because I kind of disliked this read but I also kind of loved that sort of book. I would recommend this book to anybody around the age of about 10–13 or 14. Overall I think that this book was okay and it may be a very good read for anyone who likes the sound of it.
