I'd heard a lot about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas this book before reading it. One, that people had issues with the fact that the author calls it a "fable." What does it mean to be a fable about the Holocaust? I'm still not sure. And two, does the author call it a "fable" to avoid having to be factually accurate. I don't want to spoil this book for you, because I found it to be so affecting (I definitely cried at the end). What I will say is that it is about a nine year old boy names Bruno whose father is, though he doesn't seem to entirely grasp this, the Nazi commander in charge of a concentration camp. Uprooted from his home in Berlin and relocated to what he only understands as Out-With (Auschwitz), Bruno is lonely, and so one day he searches for a friend. He finds a friend on the other side of a fence, where there are, he learns, thousands of people in striped pajamas. Bruno will frustrate you for much of the book, and then he will find his way into your heart, as his ignorance comes closer to understanding, but never quite reaches it. This is a thought-provoking novel, whose implausibility left only a small mark on me. How does the Holocaust look through the eyes of a young German child? This book is just an attempt to imagine what that might have been like.
* * * * (four stars)
P.S. Word on the street is that the book is already being made into a movie.
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