It's been years since I read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas so I thought I might feel a little unawares going into this but that wasn't the case at all. This is beautifully written though harrowing and tragic at times, utterly compelling and like nothing I've read before. I found some of the cliches and stereotypes a little jarring but I can look beyond them. It's a fantastic use of the dual timeline and a must read if you're looking for historical fiction around this subject.

I have the feeling I may be one of the few people in the world who has not read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas or seen the film adaptation. I wondered if this would effect my appreciation of this, its sequel; the answer is a definite no. In fact All The Broken Places may be one of the most memorable and thought-provoking novels I read this year. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve found it so difficult to write a review that will do it justice. (I’m still not sure I have.)

Moving between past and present, we gradually learn about Gretel’s childhood and the impact her proximity to the horrific events of the Holocaust has had on her. Having had an early taste of what her identity becoming known might result in, the majority of Gretel’s life has been spent hiding her past, adopting new identities when disclosure is threatened, moving to new places and being in a constant state of watchfulness.

In addition, she has lived with a constant sense of guilt – at the dreadful things that took place ‘on the other side of the fence’ and her part in the death of a loved one. ‘Guilt was what kept you awake in the middle of the night or, if you managed to sleep, poisoned your dreams. Guilt intruded upon any happy moments, whispering in your ear that you had no right to pleasure. Guilt followed you down streets, interrupting the most mundane moments with remembrances of days and hours when you could have done something to prevent tragedy but chose to do nothing.’ Managing those feelings of guilt has meant repressing unwelcome memories. There are photographs Gretel can’t bear to look at, a location she refers to only as ‘that other place’, a name she can’t bear to say.

There are a number of occasions on which Gretel is challenged about her defence that she was ‘just a child’ and had no knowledge of what was taking place. And, that even if it was true, she did nothing after the war to help bring the perpetrators to justice. In fact that she took deliberate steps to avoid this. When, soon after the end of the war, she is presented with indisputable evidence of what occurred and how close she was to that cruelty, the effect on her is so unbearable it results in a catastrophic act and the destruction of a relationship.

In the book there are not just broken places but broken people too. Gretel, of course, but also her mother, and Gretel’s new neighbour Madelyn.

There are moments of light amongst the darkness. For example, Gretel’s tender relationship with her vulnerable neighbour, Heidi, and the way she bonds with young Henry. And Edgar, Gretel’s late husband, whom we meet at the very beginning of their relationship, is a wonderful model of devotion, understanding and acceptance.

All the Broken Places is an unsparing exploration of how the sins of the past can weigh on individuals and the burden of complicity. ‘By doing nothing, you did everything. By taking no responsibility, you bear all responsibility.’ The book poses some difficult questions. If someone you love commits terrible acts is it right to still love them? Can anything you do ever make up for the sins of others? Is taking one life to save another justified?

I’m not sure the actions Gretel takes at the end of the book represent sufficient reparation given the scale of the evil that occurred in ‘that other place’ but I got the sense Gretel thought they did and she viewed the consequences of her actions as a kind of justice, as the punishment she deserved.

In his afterword, the author states his belief that, for all the mistakes in her life and her complicity in evil, Gretel’s story is still worth telling but it’s up to the reader to decide if it’s worth reading. My conclusion is an unequivocal yes.

Having just re-read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas before reading its sequel I knew this was not to be a light read. It is breath-takingly beautiful and devastating all at once.

In All the Broken Places, we get to hear Gretel's story in the years after the war and the devastating loss of her nine year old brother. We move in time from 1946 up until the present day. Gretel is formidable now but she has suffered terribly with feelings of guilt, of grief and shame. Haunted by her family's secrets and her own, she has had to live a life of lies. And the cost of this weighs heavy.

When a new family move into the apartment below her, she is at first dreading it. They have a nine year old son, Henry. But Henry and her soon form a bond, and when it becomes clear that Henry is being hurt, Gretel knows she has to finally save a life - in her own way - atoning for her long-held shame.

Beautifully written, deeply thought-provoking and incredibly moving, this is a triumphant sequel.

I haven't read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas however that didn't stop me being able to pick up and enjoy this book. The author provides sufficient detail for the reader to be able to understand what has happened previously and although this is obviously just the basics it is enough. I certainly didn't feel disadvantaged by not having read the first.
This book covers several time periods for the main character who is dealing with the issues of her past and the story flows very well I didn't actually raise just how much I had read on my first go until I put it down. This is a very well written novel and the author has described the life of the characters and the locations extremely well.
Thanks to the publisher, author and NetGalley for my advance copy for review purposes. I am only giving this 4 stars however as it's not the type of story which I normally go for and therefore I wasn't completely gripped by it however the writing is excellent.

If you read the first book, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, then this is a must read. Beautifully written. Pulls at your heartstrings

91-year old Gretel seems a quiet widow, living in a prestigious mansion block but Gretel has secrets. When a young family moves into the flat below she befriends their nine-year old son but realises that both are in danger. Gretel is forced to confront the past that she hides, one which would lead to her vilification, as she has a choice to save young Hugo. Will she make a different choice to the one she made about her own brother?
Much is made of this book being a sequel to The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas but it can be read independently and there might be a lot to be said for reading it at a distance of time as I did. The story is a real slow-burner, Gretel's life after the war is always coloured by her family's links but bother the historical and the modern are beautifully described. I found the ending a little forced and unreal but really it did not detract from a heartfelt story about victims.

Following on from The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, this follows Gretel who is now in her 90's and is feeling very guilty about her past and her involvement in Auschwitz. The story moves from present to past. Totally compelling, a difficult read, it's tragic, harrowing, a story which has to be told, has to be read.

All the Broken Places is the sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and tells the story of Gretel, Bruno's sister. After the war Gretel's father is executed and she and her mother move to France where they live under assumed names. Unfortunately their real identity is discovered and they are subjected to a humiliating ordeal. After her mother's death Gretel moves to Australia where she is happy for a time but yet again her past comes back to haunt her. She then moves to England where she finds a job, eventually marries and has a son. She lives for decades in a mansion block overlooking Hyde Park and aged 91 she is widowed but enjoying life. The apartment below Gretel's is sold and a new couple with a 9 year old son move in. Gretel is disturbed by the treatment meted out to the wife and son by the bullying DeWitt and decides that she must do something about it. However she could put herself at risk of exposing her own secret.

John Boyne is a great story teller. I've enjoyed reading this book and all of his previous books and look forward to his next one.

I was sent a copy of All The Broken Places by John Boyne to read and review by NetGalley. This novel, written by one of my all-time favourite authors, is a follow on from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. It is all at once wonderful, terrible, poignant, harrowing and totally compelling. We follow the life of Gretel, now in her 90s, with chapters moving between her history and the present day. I found I was engrossed in the story, which was totally believable to me, with my emotions fluctuating every which way throughout. For me this is an incredibly important book, both in what it says and how it says it – a modern masterpiece.

All The Broken Places was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and it didn’t disappoint! I'm happy to say that it fell firmly in the sequel-I-didn’t-know-I-needed category.

Spanning decades and countries in-between the present day, the book explores Gretel’s life after the war, her grief, guilt, and heavy conscience as she tries to find balance after the horrors her father inflicted at Auschwitz (and that she wasn’t completely ignorant to as much as she pretends to be). We follow her and her mother as they flee to France and try to blend in with the locals, changing their identities in a bid to leave their German pasts behind. We also see Gretel escape to the other side of the world for a fresh start but alas, her nightmares continue to follow her. In the present day, Gretel, now in her 90s lives in her affluent London apartment where she has remained since travelling to England after Sydney. When a young boy and his parents move in downstairs, she struggles to stay calm - young boys still remind her of the time before. But when she realises the boy needs her help, she puts her anxieties aside, accidentally getting herself mixed up in a domestic upheaval that will upend her life completely.

Gretel was one of the best flawed characters I’ve ever read about. Her story and actions opened up so many conflicting feelings as we had to imagine how we would have dealt with certain situations and sought redemption for our actions. As a minor character in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, it was interesting to see things from her perspective, both during the war and the chains of events that followed.

It was beautifully written and researched, with characters both new and familiar. The ending was both unexpected and exhilarating - it felt like the perfect closure for both Gretel and the readers.

I highly recommend this one, especially for those that, like me, first discovered WW2 fiction through The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I think I even enjoyed this one more which I didn't think was even possible.

I haven’t read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I’m unsure whether I’d have liked All the Broken Places more if I had read the first story, although this seems to have suffice no backstory to work as a standalone.

Maybe this is just the wrong book at the wrong time; I haven’t been able to engage with the story at all and rather give it a poor review, I’m putting it to one side to start afresh at another time. I’m giving it 4 stars because what I have read (around10%) is beautifully written.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

Brilliant! Totally absorbing. This sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a fascinating take on guilt, deception and reflection of a time that no matter what, Gretel can never escape.

I struggled with this. I really wanted to like it but I just found the endless coincidences a bit irritating. It also relied on clichés quite a bit and I didn't like that - e.g. moving to London and randomly seeing the Queen, then getting a job in Harrods.

Not for me I'm afraid.

(review not posted elsewhere online).

Such a moving story that was a follow on from the fabulous 'Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' but it certainly can be read as a stand alone book. It is fast paced and kept me wanting to continue to read at whatever time of the day or night it was, my Kindle was with me for whenever I could grab a few moments. The story is based upon the guilt that Gretel has from her childhood and how she never seemed to do the right thing or own up to what had really go under her skin. I felt so sorry for her intense emotions. The story goes backwards and forwards from 1943 when she was at Auschwitz to the present day 2022. It had many dark sections that really hit me hard considering that people could be so cruel to a person who had no control over her family history. The ending was intense but it did wind up Gretel's story so well.
A beautiful emotive story that I would recommend to everyone to read and feel the pain that the Holocaust has caused to more than just those who were incarcerated by the Germans.

It is a riveting follow-up to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and it works incredibly well as a standalone.
The story is told with a dual timeline of Gretels post-war life and the present. The frequent shift between past and present made compulsive reading and I devoured this book in one day.
Gretel is a very human and complex character who grappled with grief, guilt and fear for her entire adult life. She kept her identity secret for a lifetime and even as an old woman the thought of confronting her past and opening old wounds would leave her emotional and upset. There was no way she could right the wrongs of her past but I thought it fitting that she had the chance to make a difference in one little boy's life and in a way atone for her sins.

A couple of things about Gretel's life appeared odd to me- On the run from Nazi hunters and the like she and her mother chose Paris to hide in after the war and with their German accents not well disguised. Also, when Gretel was slightly older she didn't recognise that David was Jewish. These little oddities aside, the book is very fast-paced, and dark but greatly entertaining.
Some people might get hung up on whether the book is historically accurate but as a work of fiction, it works. It is simply inspired by events in WWII and at the same time, it raises thought-provoking questions about what faced the ordinary Germans who had to adapt to post-war Europe.

Given what a fantastic and moving book "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" is, it is difficult to believe that the author could follow it up successfully. He has certainly managed to do do with his latest book which is incredibly moving, heartfelt and left me both grieving and at the same time with some hope in the humanity of people. The story follows the life of Gretel, the daughter of an SS officer who is put in charge of one of the camps processing Jewish prisoners. How does she cope with the fact that her father is a living man but at the same time capable of committing such terrible atrocities due to his beliefs in nazism and Hitler. The book follows Gretel throughout her life and shows how her upbringing affects her own approach to life and survivors guilt. An excellent book worthy of being made into a film. Let's hope that such writings as well as the historical tomes on this subject mean that we will never forget man's inhumanity to man and such atrocities will not be repeated.

All The Broken Places" is the long awaited sequel to "The Boy in The Stripped Pyjamas". It is helpful to either have read, or be aware of the plot if "The Boy In The Stripped Pyjamas" before you read this. Boyne assumes you have read it and doesn't reiterate it at any point.

Gretl Fernsby is a 91 year old widow living comfortably in a flat London. But she has a past, a dark past, which she has gone to lenghts throughout her life to hide and now she is going to have to face her guilt. I won't go into the plot in any more detail so not to spoil the book for anyone.

This is a book about Guilt. Different types of guilt, guilt by association and guilt due to personal actions. Can a child be guilty because of the actions of a parent ? How do we deal with the said guilt ? Do we make reparations? Do we ignore it or do we come to terms with it.

A wonderfully written sequel that keeps you turning the pages. Definitely Recommend.

Greta and her mother leave Auschwitz and Germany after the war to escape their past and escape retribution by hiding under false identities. How can they find peace and a new life? This follow up book is just brilliant and well worth the wait.

Great characters, especially Gretel with an excellent storyline that sans decades. Cannot recommend this book highly enough.

A sequel to The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, although this book is written for adults.
I think this can be read as a standalone book as there are plenty of references to the previous book and it’s easy to work out what happened originally.
Such a good book about a period of time the should never be forgotten or repeated and about the guilt that has lasted a lifetime.
An excellent story that’s worthy of its 5*

I love the fact that John Boyne used the time in lockdown to write the story of Gretel, sister of the boy who perishes in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

Alternating between 2022 and other years between WW2 and the present, the narrative moves seamlessly from time to time, place to place. It made me wonder if the chapters were written in the sequence they follow in the book, or if the author wrote all of 2022, then all of 1946, etc, before slotting the sections together. Either way, it all fits together beautifully.

Gretel is a fascinating character. As a girl during the war, she is confused, vulnerable, flirtatious - in short, full of contradictions, just as an adolescent girl would be given her circumstances. As an independent woman, her life revolves around hiding her true identity. As an old woman, she is forthright in her views. Her life-long feelings of guilt are still strong, but she has wit and charisma. I particularly liked certain observations such as the contrast between theatre and cinema audiences, and her thoughts about her neighbours. Little things like this make her come alive.

Parts of the book are brutal and difficult to read, but despite this, whenever I wasn't reading, I was longing to pick it up again.

Picking up on comments by another reviewer, I don't think the book was too long. Indeed, I'd have been happy to read more. And I challenge the assertion that Henry's injuries would have been picked up in school. We read all too often that yet another child has 'slipped thought the net' and died at their parent's hand, failed by teachers and social services.

I was more than a little surprised by the ending but on reflection it brings Gretel's life full circle.

To conclude, this is the best book I've read in a long time.