The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne

"Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age."

I understand that some people don't like this book because they believe Bruno can't possibly be this naive or that it trivialises the holocaust, but I think that this is exactly what makes 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' special and incredibly clever. 

Bruno comes home one day to find his maid packing up his belongings. His father has been promoted by Hitler and his whole family must move somewhere new. He later discovers that this new place is called Poland. Just a few feet from his nee front door hundreds of people mill around in what he mistakes for striped pyjamas. They are separated from him by a barbed wire fence and they all look sad. Bruno is confused. One day, further up the field, he meets a boy his own age. Even their meeting never clarifies things in his mind. Bruno is innocent. He has been privileged, and he thinks the world is a fine place for all. 

This book is written from the little boy's perspective. Bruno is nine years old and has been lied to and sheltered for his entire life, so much so that he has the mindset of a child much younger. The world is perfect and everyone is as lucky as he is. Even when it is right in front of his face, he cannot see that people might be suffering. In the same respect his friend Shmuel, who he meets every afternoon, can't seem to believe that nobody would be so oblivious to what is happening to the Jews, so he never mentions it to his new friend. 

One of the most wondrous things about this book is that it captures the innocence of children. As a charity worker I often find myself longing for a time before I knew that terrible things happen to people just a few thousand miles from where I live. We were all that young once. Bruno's nativity is exaggerated, but for the purposes of this novel it needs to be. He has to be old enough to explore on his own, but young enough to be totally oblivious to the horrible things happening right in front of his face. 

I knew something horrific was going to happen at the end, but it still broke my heart in two. Still, nothing startled me so much as Boyne's flippant and sarcastic comment at the end. It really made me think. We are coming to a time now in which there will be no holocaust survivors still alive. The whole event will, at some point, become just something that once happened in history. To someone else and once upon a time. 

I don't think Boyne was trivialising the holocaust at all. I think he was making a social statement about the mindset of people today. To many of us the holocaust is something that happened once a long time ago, to nobody we ever knew. We are all as naive as Bruno if we believe these types of things are not happening across the world right now, or if we believe that it could never happen again. 

I really recommend this book. It is an easy but a powerful read. Drink in the message and remember it. The last five pages move quickly and make the slow start and slightly annoying repetitiveness well worth it. Maybe don't read it on a sun lounger like I did, though. Unless you are prepared to pretend you have sun lotion in your eyes for a couple of hours afterwards.