What is so frustrating about this book is that it's almost good. The dialogue is good, the prose is good, the concept is, if not good, then at least interesting. Boyne does a really good job of hinting at the world outside his 9-year-old protagonist's point of view, and yeah, I found it all a bit trite and annoying, but it's kinda not actually that bad. This should be a three-star read, but it's not, and I'm gonna tell you why.

-1/2 star for the historical inaccuracies. Firstly, Bruno and Schmuel never would have met, as, even if Schmuel had been forced into work instead of just murdered when he first arrived at Auschwitz, there's simply no way they would have been able to sustain long conversations regularly over the course of a year. I'm sure there are a hundred youtube videos laying out exactly why, and you can go seek those out, but I feel like if you know anything about concentration camps, you would kinda guess that that isn't going to happen. Secondly, the mischaracterisation of Nazism greatly disturbs me, but I'll get into that later.

-1/2 star for Out-With and the Fury. Guys, this kid is fucking German. He speaks German. That's not how you pronounce Auschwitz. What the fuck are we doing here. It seems small, but that really pissed me off.

-1/2 star for Boyne presenting his novel as absolute truth (hello, twitter fights with the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum), and the lasting damage this book has had on UK education. I urge you to go do your own research on this, but a scary amount of people have come out of school with misconceptions of the mechanics of the Holocaust and undue sympathy for the Nazis because of this book. It's not great, Bob.

Anyway that's how three stars came down to one and a half, but I've not even gotten into my. main issues with this book, so buckle up, fuckleheads. My two major gripes with this book are as follows.

Major Gripe Number One

The death of Bruno at the end and, by extension, the book's aim, which is to make the audience care about the deaths of at least six million Jewish people by making them care about the death of one non-Jewish German boy. The entire stance of this piece of shit is to ask what if it was your child who died in that gas chamber? and that is fundamentally an unhelpful way to think about the Holocaust, because it isn't your child in the gas chamber, it's your entire family, your entire lineage, your neighbour's entire lineage, your town's entire population, its everyone you've ever known, every friend you've ever had, it's fucking everyone and then some. The death toll is inconceivable; you have never even seen six million people all in one place, you cannot possibly fathom what it is like to see them all dead. The centring of Bruno's life and death also leaves a sour taste in the mouth, as Boyne could have spent 200 pages actually telling the story of a Jewish genocide victim, instead of yapping on about a kid that in actuality is likely never going to be in that position. No one's going around threatening the lives of upper class white boys, but anti-semitism is still alive and well, and there are other genocides happening right now, and none of them to white people. Besides, I don't need the comparison of the death of said upper class white boy to know that Jews are human beings that don't deserve to die, which brings me nicely to my next point.

In the last chapter, Boyne talks about how Bruno's dad doesn't see the point in living after his son's death, how he no longer cares about his work, and when he's arrested as a war criminal he doesn't care. Sorry, am I supposed to feel bad for this Nazi? Am I supposed to weep because he didn't know murder was bad before his son was murdered, and then still keeps on murdering people regardless? Am I supposed to empathise with this monster? I know that killing is bad, not because someone I love was murdered, but because stripping someone of their life without just cause is morally abhorrent. This is why we have Nazi sympathisers in our classrooms.

Major Gripe Number Two

I don't think John Boyne understands the banality of evil or the Nazi propaganda machine and this is a problem. All the Nazis in this book are mean men who are outwardly violent to those around them. He cannot conceive that a nice man could be a Nazi, he cannot conceive that a woman could be a Nazi. All indoctrination of the children happen in and around Auschwitz; antisemitism is endemic to Auschwitz, before Auschwitz Bruno and the other one don't know who Hitler is, don't know what a Jew is, the war against the rest of Europe is never referenced outside of Auschwitz. My biggest issue with this book is that Bruno, German national, son of a commandant, has no reason not to hate the Jews.

When Hitler took absolute power in 1933, German education was massively reformed. All Jewish teachers were sacked or worse, and the content of education increasingly began to include a kind of critical race theory. Every day, in every subject, animosity towards Jewish people was encouraged and a sense of German national pride sowed. Bruno, though I think intentionally aged to be too young to join the Hitler Youth, would have known who the Fuhrer was, and would have known the Nazi concept of the Jew, and would have known to hate them. His commandant father, instrument of the regime, would have taught him how to report his neighbours for dissidence, how to uphold the burgeoning empire in his image. There is no reason I can think of that would make Bruno befriend Schmuel, and that's what makes it so scary. That's Nazism. That's the banality of evil. And instead we get passages like this:

'Heil Hitler,' [Bruno] said, which, he presumed was another way of saying, 'Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon.'

First of all, you're telling me a nine-year-old German doesn't know what the word heil means? Second of all, you're telling me the son of a high-ranking Nazi doesn't know who his supreme leader is? Fucking don't even with me. It trivialises the danger of Nazism, reduces it down to the unfortunate consequences of the actions of a few bad men instead of a sustained political culture that was drilled into everyone who chose to remain in Germany after Hitler took power. If we're going to be teaching this in schools, can we at least tell them how extremist regimes actually happen so they don't fall victim to them at young, impressionable ages like Bruno would have in reality?

Anyway. In summary, this book is not good. Have a nice rest of your day.