Genre Fiction
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All the Broken Places: A Novel
"You can't prepare yourself for the magnitude and emotional impact of this powerful novel." -John Irving, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The World According to Garp
"Exceptional, layered and compelling…This book moves like a freight train." -Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of In Love
From the New York Times bestselling author John Boyne, a devastating, beautiful story about a woman who must confront the sins of her own terrible past, and a present in which it is never too late for bravery
Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby has lived in the same well-to-do mansion block in London for decades. She lives a quiet, comfortable life, despite her deeply disturbing, dark past. She doesn't talk about her escape from Nazi Germany at age 12. She doesn't talk about the grim post-war years in France with her mother. Most of all, she doesn't talk about her father, who was the commandant of one of the Reich's most notorious extermination camps.
Then, a new family moves into the apartment below her. In spite of herself, Gretel can't help but begin a friendship with the little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back memories she would rather forget. One night, she witnesses a disturbing, violent argument between Henry's beautiful mother and his arrogant father, one that threatens Gretel's hard-won, self-contained existence.
All The Broken Places moves back and forth in time between Gretel's girlhood in Germany to present-day London as a woman whose life has been haunted by the past. Now, Gretel faces a similar crossroads to one she encountered long ago. Back then, she denied her own complicity, but now, faced with a chance to interrogate her guilt, grief and remorse, she can choose to save a young boy. If she does, she will be forced to reveal the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting. This time, she can make a different choice than before-whatever the cost to herself….
"Exceptional, layered and compelling…This book moves like a freight train." -Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of In Love
From the New York Times bestselling author John Boyne, a devastating, beautiful story about a woman who must confront the sins of her own terrible past, and a present in which it is never too late for bravery
Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby has lived in the same well-to-do mansion block in London for decades. She lives a quiet, comfortable life, despite her deeply disturbing, dark past. She doesn't talk about her escape from Nazi Germany at age 12. She doesn't talk about the grim post-war years in France with her mother. Most of all, she doesn't talk about her father, who was the commandant of one of the Reich's most notorious extermination camps.
Then, a new family moves into the apartment below her. In spite of herself, Gretel can't help but begin a friendship with the little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back memories she would rather forget. One night, she witnesses a disturbing, violent argument between Henry's beautiful mother and his arrogant father, one that threatens Gretel's hard-won, self-contained existence.
All The Broken Places moves back and forth in time between Gretel's girlhood in Germany to present-day London as a woman whose life has been haunted by the past. Now, Gretel faces a similar crossroads to one she encountered long ago. Back then, she denied her own complicity, but now, faced with a chance to interrogate her guilt, grief and remorse, she can choose to save a young boy. If she does, she will be forced to reveal the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting. This time, she can make a different choice than before-whatever the cost to herself….
Editorial Reviews
"When is a monster's child culpable? Guilt and complicity are multifaceted. John Boyne is a maestro of historical fiction. You can't prepare yourself for the magnitude and emotional impact of this powerful novel."
-John Irving, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The World According to Garp
"This novel, this exceptional, layered and compelling story, is built on modern history and all of us people who live it. The protagonist, the elderly, forthright and mysterious Mrs. Fernsby, is more than memorable and every one of Boyne's characters, and every scene, dark or light, is limned in truth and insight. This book moves like a freight train,with force and consequence for the reader."
-Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of In Love
"John Boyne has written a propulsive, heartrending mystery that delivers on both an intellectual and emotional level. It is the story of Gretel Fernsby, a ninety-one year old woman who has spent her life keeping a terrible secret, and the reckoning she faces when past and present collide. Complex. Ferocious. Beautiful and hard. I could not put this novel down."
-Ariel Lawhon, New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia and Code Name Hélène
"What an incredible feat of storytelling. All the Broken Places is a stark confrontation of evil, an examination of guilt and deflection, and an old-fashioned page-turner. John treads the finest of narrative lines with skill and grace and proves himself yet again to be among the world's greatest storytellers."
-Donal Ryan, #1 international bestselling author of The Queen of Dirt Island and Strange Flowers
"A powerful novel about secrets and atonement after Auschwitz… All the Broken Places is a defence of literature's need to shine a light on the darkest aspects of human natur...
-John Irving, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The World According to Garp
"This novel, this exceptional, layered and compelling story, is built on modern history and all of us people who live it. The protagonist, the elderly, forthright and mysterious Mrs. Fernsby, is more than memorable and every one of Boyne's characters, and every scene, dark or light, is limned in truth and insight. This book moves like a freight train,with force and consequence for the reader."
-Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of In Love
"John Boyne has written a propulsive, heartrending mystery that delivers on both an intellectual and emotional level. It is the story of Gretel Fernsby, a ninety-one year old woman who has spent her life keeping a terrible secret, and the reckoning she faces when past and present collide. Complex. Ferocious. Beautiful and hard. I could not put this novel down."
-Ariel Lawhon, New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia and Code Name Hélène
"What an incredible feat of storytelling. All the Broken Places is a stark confrontation of evil, an examination of guilt and deflection, and an old-fashioned page-turner. John treads the finest of narrative lines with skill and grace and proves himself yet again to be among the world's greatest storytellers."
-Donal Ryan, #1 international bestselling author of The Queen of Dirt Island and Strange Flowers
"A powerful novel about secrets and atonement after Auschwitz… All the Broken Places is a defence of literature's need to shine a light on the darkest aspects of human natur...
Readers Top Reviews
DawealeReading is fo
John Boyne is a literary genius. He says in the forward of this book that he was saving this idea until he was really old and had run out of ideas but Covid left him with time and so he wrote it now. Thank goodness he did otherwise I might have missed it! He has taken a character from The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas and written about her life beyond the war. He chose the little boy's sister. No spoilers from me at all. Just to say that this sequel is an amazing read from the first page to the last. It is also extremely thought provoking and will test your own values and perhaps question issues of guilt, responsibility and remorse. Brilliant.
Mr. Alex Taylor
I had not previously read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, to which this novel forms a sequel, but it is not a requirement to do so and your enjoyment of this book is not in any way compromised if you have not read the earlier novel. I found All the Broken Places to be such a fine piece of writing that I immediately bought The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and read this immediately afterwards. John Boyle is a very fine writer indeed. I have read almost all of his novels now - they are beautifully written and always complex and layered, but with a very clear narrative line. This book is no exception and although The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a fine novel in its own right, I enjoyed All the Broken Places, its sequel, much more. It is so finely written and so beautifully structured that I find it difficult to find the words to describe the quality of this work. Bruno’s sister, Gretel, is now in her nineties and living in a very privileged part of London - haunted by her past, by the loss of her brother and by the guilt she still feels as the daughter of a Nazi family who were directly involved in the Holocaust: Gretel’s father was the Commandant at Auschwitz. The story is told by switching from the present to the past. Although it is not a particularly long novel, it is epic in its themes and in the scope of the narrative. John Boyne’s characters are finely drawn - each individual and real, and yet he achieves this strength of characterisation through an economy of means. I love John Boyne’s ‘voice’ as a writer. The language is accessible, the voice simple and direct, and the narrative carries you swiftly and easily, despite the complexity of the ideas embraced here, and the layers within the story itself. He does not shy away from moral complexity - Gretel’s story and the questions it raises for her likewise challenge the reader’s sense of moral values. If you have never read a novel by John Boyne this is as good a place as any to start. It is an utterly human story, richly told, and one of his very best books.
C. Madden
First of all there is no read to have read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. It all becomes very clear and although this is a sequel they are two very different books. This is very much an adult novel. From start to finish this is a brilliantly written story. It has everything a novel needs. Characters, plot, atmosphere, back and forth settings with alternate chronological chapters. The twist towards the end when it comes made me put the book down; I never saw it coming for a second. John Boyne is a fantastic author (A History of Loneliness is in my top 10 books) and I can’t recommend this one enough. It’s rare I write reviews these days - this book deserves all the 5 star ones it can get.
Jenni Ogden
John Boyne is a beautiful writer and deep thinker, and his novels are always thought-provoking and immersing. ‘All the Broken Places’ is no exception. His stories set during war are the most haunting, but this one has a twist on that. His protagonist, ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby, almost a recluse in her elegant apartment in London, 2022, takes us back through her life, a life lived in fear and guilt and grief as she tries to forgive herself for her part in the most heinous war crimes in living memory. Yet she was only twelve, a child who had no agency in those crimes, and had no understanding of what those crimes were. Who could blame her, this child of 12? Even today, with all we have learned, it is still almost impossible to believe such atrocities could have been committed by fellow humans. But Gretel has had her life, a life on the run, a life of lies, to figure out how she might make amends, how she might atone in some small way for her father’s crimes, for her own complicity as she refused to see, refused to understand, and sacrificed, by her refusal to understand, her own brother. Her own brother who did understand. Yet still she turns her head away. Fear? Guilt? Her memories of a father she loved, looked up to, perhaps still loves? For me, the novel’s most difficult question was what would I have done in her place? As a twelve-year-old, what could Gretel have done differently? But as a 30, 50, 70, 90-year old, what might I have done then? This is, of course, the story of the sister of the boy in striped pyjamas.
R T Twinem
For those of you who read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas you will be equally as moved by this book which in loose terms is a sequel. Greta, now in her 90's, living alone, is eager to meet the new family living in an adjacent flat. She has a turbulent past, and escaped from Nazi Germany as a child. Her father had been commandent of Auschwitz a fact she wishes to keep to herself, but when the young boy now living next door is subject to abuse she wonders if she should interfere and perhaps undo the terrible horror that happened to her younger brother many, many years ago, and for which she carries a terrible guilt. This is heart-wrenching story telling, a story that will stay with you for a very long time, and once again showcases the talent that is the amazing Mr Boyne. Highly, highly, recommended. Many thanks to netgalley for a gratis copy in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Part 1
The Devil's Daughter
London 2022 / Paris 1946
One
If every man is guilty of all the good he did not do, as Voltaire suggested, then I have spent a lifetime convincing myself that I am innocent of all the bad. It has been a convenient way to endure decades of self-imposed exile from the past, to see myself as a victim of historical amnesia, acquitted from complicity, and exonerated from blame.
My final story begins and ends, however, with something as trivial as a box cutter. Mine had broken a few days earlier and, finding it a useful tool to keep in a kitchen drawer, I paid a visit to my local hardware shop to purchase a new one. Upon my return, a letter was waiting for me from an estate agent, a similar one delivered to every resident of Winterville Court, politely informing each of us that the flat below my own was being put up for sale. The previous occupant, Mr. Richardson, had lived in Flat One for some thirty years but died shortly before Christmas, leaving the dwelling empty. His daughter, a speech therapist, resided in New York and, to the best of my knowledge, had no plans to return to London, so I had made my peace with the fact that it would not be long before I was forced to interact with a stranger in the lobby, perhaps even having to feign an interest in his or her life or be required to divulge small details about my own.
Mr. Richardson and I had enjoyed the perfect neighborly relationship in that we had not exchanged a single word since 2008. In the early years of his residence, we'd been on good terms and he had occasionally come upstairs for a game of chess with my late husband, Edgar, but somehow, he and I had never moved past the formalities. He always addressed me as "Mrs. Fernsby" while I referred to him as "Mr. Richardson." The last time I set foot in his flat had been four months after Edgar's death, when he invited me for supper and, having accepted the invitation, I found myself on the receiving end of an amorous advance, which I declined. He took the rejection badly and we became as near to strangers as two people who coexist within a single building can be.
My Mayfair residence is listed as a flat but that is a little like describing Windsor Castle as the Queen's weekend bolthole. Each apartment in our building-there are five in total, one on the ground floor, then two on both floors above-is spread across fifteen hundred square feet of prime London real estate, each with three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, and views over Hyde Park that value them, I am reliably informed, at somewhere between £2 and £3 million apiece. Edgar came into a substantial amount of money a few years after we married, an unexpected bequest from a spinster aunt, and while he would have preferred to move to a more peaceful area outside Central London, I had done some research of my own and was determined not only to live in Mayfair but to reside in this particular building, should it ever prove possible. Financially, this had seemed unlikely but then, one day, like a deus ex machina, Aunt Belinda passed away and everything changed. I'd always planned on explaining to Edgar the reason why I was so desperate to live here, but somehow never did, and I rather regret that now.
My husband was very fond of children but I agreed only to one, giving birth to our son, Caden, in 1961. In recent years, as the property has increased in value, Caden has encouraged me to sell and purchase something smaller in a less expensive part of town, but I suspect this is because he worries that I might live to be a hundred and he is keen to receive a portion of his inheritance while he is still young enough to enjoy it. He is thrice married and now engaged for a fourth time; I have given up on acquainting myself with the women in his life. I find that as soon as one gets to know them, they are dispatched, a new model is installed, and one has to take the time to learn their idiosyncrasies, as one might with a new washing machine or television set. As a child, he treated his friends with similar ruthlessness. We speak regularly on the telephone, and he visits me for supper every two weeks, but we have a complicated relationship, damaged in part by my year-long absence from his life when he was nine years old. The truth is, I am simply not comfortable around children and I find small boys particularly difficult.
My concern about my new neighbor was not that he or she might cause unnecessary noise-these flats are very well insulated and, even with a few weak spots here and there, I had grown accustomed over the years to the various peculiar sounds that rose up through Mr. Richardson's ceiling-but I resented the fact that my ordered world might be upset. I hoped for someone who had no interest in knowi...
The Devil's Daughter
London 2022 / Paris 1946
One
If every man is guilty of all the good he did not do, as Voltaire suggested, then I have spent a lifetime convincing myself that I am innocent of all the bad. It has been a convenient way to endure decades of self-imposed exile from the past, to see myself as a victim of historical amnesia, acquitted from complicity, and exonerated from blame.
My final story begins and ends, however, with something as trivial as a box cutter. Mine had broken a few days earlier and, finding it a useful tool to keep in a kitchen drawer, I paid a visit to my local hardware shop to purchase a new one. Upon my return, a letter was waiting for me from an estate agent, a similar one delivered to every resident of Winterville Court, politely informing each of us that the flat below my own was being put up for sale. The previous occupant, Mr. Richardson, had lived in Flat One for some thirty years but died shortly before Christmas, leaving the dwelling empty. His daughter, a speech therapist, resided in New York and, to the best of my knowledge, had no plans to return to London, so I had made my peace with the fact that it would not be long before I was forced to interact with a stranger in the lobby, perhaps even having to feign an interest in his or her life or be required to divulge small details about my own.
Mr. Richardson and I had enjoyed the perfect neighborly relationship in that we had not exchanged a single word since 2008. In the early years of his residence, we'd been on good terms and he had occasionally come upstairs for a game of chess with my late husband, Edgar, but somehow, he and I had never moved past the formalities. He always addressed me as "Mrs. Fernsby" while I referred to him as "Mr. Richardson." The last time I set foot in his flat had been four months after Edgar's death, when he invited me for supper and, having accepted the invitation, I found myself on the receiving end of an amorous advance, which I declined. He took the rejection badly and we became as near to strangers as two people who coexist within a single building can be.
My Mayfair residence is listed as a flat but that is a little like describing Windsor Castle as the Queen's weekend bolthole. Each apartment in our building-there are five in total, one on the ground floor, then two on both floors above-is spread across fifteen hundred square feet of prime London real estate, each with three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, and views over Hyde Park that value them, I am reliably informed, at somewhere between £2 and £3 million apiece. Edgar came into a substantial amount of money a few years after we married, an unexpected bequest from a spinster aunt, and while he would have preferred to move to a more peaceful area outside Central London, I had done some research of my own and was determined not only to live in Mayfair but to reside in this particular building, should it ever prove possible. Financially, this had seemed unlikely but then, one day, like a deus ex machina, Aunt Belinda passed away and everything changed. I'd always planned on explaining to Edgar the reason why I was so desperate to live here, but somehow never did, and I rather regret that now.
My husband was very fond of children but I agreed only to one, giving birth to our son, Caden, in 1961. In recent years, as the property has increased in value, Caden has encouraged me to sell and purchase something smaller in a less expensive part of town, but I suspect this is because he worries that I might live to be a hundred and he is keen to receive a portion of his inheritance while he is still young enough to enjoy it. He is thrice married and now engaged for a fourth time; I have given up on acquainting myself with the women in his life. I find that as soon as one gets to know them, they are dispatched, a new model is installed, and one has to take the time to learn their idiosyncrasies, as one might with a new washing machine or television set. As a child, he treated his friends with similar ruthlessness. We speak regularly on the telephone, and he visits me for supper every two weeks, but we have a complicated relationship, damaged in part by my year-long absence from his life when he was nine years old. The truth is, I am simply not comfortable around children and I find small boys particularly difficult.
My concern about my new neighbor was not that he or she might cause unnecessary noise-these flats are very well insulated and, even with a few weak spots here and there, I had grown accustomed over the years to the various peculiar sounds that rose up through Mr. Richardson's ceiling-but I resented the fact that my ordered world might be upset. I hoped for someone who had no interest in knowi...
