WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK . . . . . . IF YOUR HEART IS WEAK.

 Of all contemporary male YA writers, John Boyne has this peerless style which makes sense while mingling the innocent childhood in the ghastly era of world war. Although it’s inane I must mention he hails from the Trinity college, Dublin; the college of my most beloved author – Oscar Wilde. The language of this fable is so plain yet it catches the throat, incites the eyes & hooks the attention of reader while boggling the mind from get-go with the opening lines:

“One afternoon, when Bruno came home from school, he was surprised to find Maria, the family’s maid – who always kept her head bowed and never looked up from the carpet – standing in his bedroom, pulling all his belongings out of the wardrobe and packing them in four large wooden crate, even things he’d hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else’s business.”

I infer that everyone in the highly developed smart-ass 21^st century knows that the process of gassing people, however subtly, is not a mitzvah; which again is a subtle term for good deed. The scary thing about the book was not the tale but rather how John showed the vulgar holocaust from Bruno’s (a 9 year old boy’s) perspective. While written in 3^rd person POV the book’s focal point was the perception of a commandment’s son. And the tormenting part is that any little boy can relate to either Bruno or Shmuel, but it MUST NOT be read by/to any little boy.

Although full of adventurous spirit, affability & kind heartedness, Bruno’s character had fatal flaws like naivety & ignorance. And it’s because of such faults as mistaking ‘Auschwitz’ for ‘Out-With’ or ‘Das Fuhrer’ for ‘the Fury’ throughout the book that makes him levelheaded as any normal child. There is a great deal of action to astonish the sentiments of reader with relocation, loss of friendship, sibling annoyance & an adventure which will wet innumerous tissue papers. Pardon me for vagueness, but this is neither a review nor any analysis, just a candid opinion that book was worth the time.

There’s also a movie with slightly altered title ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ directed by Mark Herman, which is good but relative to the book it sucked. The naivety which made Bruno appear real in the book makes  him look stupid & selfish in this movie. The downfall had a lot to do with omniscient POV & additional outlooks. Either way imagination is stronger than reality, so pick the goddamn book alongside tissue papers already 🙂