At a glance
LuvemBooks Verdict
Best for
Readers of serious literary fiction who are already emotionally invested in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and want to follow Gretel's story into a morally searching, Holocaust-era adult narrative about complicity, inherited guilt, and the possibility of late-life reckoning.
Worth it if
Worth reading if you can sit with sustained moral ambiguity and want literary fiction that treats the Holocaust's long aftermath — guilt, silence, and the prospect of redemption — with unflinching seriousness rather than easy resolution.
Skip if
Skip it if you expect the compressed, parable-like clarity of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas — Kirkus Reviews flags avoidable repetitiveness, occasional plot aimlessness, and a contested ending that may frustrate readers seeking a definitive moral verdict.
What readers & critics say
Kirkus Reviews credits Boyne with handling the dual timelines skillfully to build suspense, while rendering Gretel's guilt as a genuinely complex amalgam of feelings, but identifies avoidable repetitiveness and warns that the ending "smacks of self-justification" likely to "spark fierce debate." The Guardian describes the novel as "consummately constructed, humming with tension until past and present collide," calling it gripping, well honed, and firmly aimed at adults.
“A complex, thoughtful character study that avoids easy answers.”
— Kirkus Reviews“Gripping, well honed and very much aimed at adults — Gretel's voice draws the reader in deftly.”
— The GuardianAsk LuvemBooks
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- Is it worth reading?
- For readers drawn to literary fiction that interrogates complicity, inherited guilt, and the possibility of late-life moral reckoning, All the Broken Places delivers those themes in a structurally ambitious form. The Guardian calls it 'consummately constructed, humming with tension until past and present collide,' and John Irving, in an endorsement published by Penguin Random House, calls it 'a stunning tour de force.' The key caveat is Kirkus Reviews' candid identification of 'avoidable repetitiousness' and 'an occasional sense of aimlessness' — a notable contrast with the tight economy of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas — and a pointed warning that the ending, however it reads as redemption, 'also smacks of self-justification.'
- Similar books
- Readers drawn to All the Broken Places may find several of the curated companion titles rewarding. Bernhard Schlink's The Reader is a natural pairing — also structured around post-Holocaust complicity, guilt, and the moral entanglement of a character who chooses silence, it shares the novel's refusal of easy absolution. J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls explores inherited guilt and collective moral responsibility across a family forced to confront their complicity in another's suffering. Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch similarly follows a protagonist shaped by a catastrophic childhood event across decades, with a structurally ambitious dual-timeline approach and a contested ending that divides readers. Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine offers a present-day London-set portrait of a woman carrying long-buried trauma and social isolation, with comparable themes of survival and a life-altering confrontation with the past.
- Who should read this?
- All the Broken Places is best suited to adult readers of serious literary fiction who are prepared to engage with moral ambiguity without resolution. Readers already emotionally invested in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas will find the expansion of Gretel's story substantive and, at times, genuinely unsettling in its implications. It is particularly well-matched to readers interested in Holocaust literature and its aftermath, stories of complicity and inherited guilt, or dual-timeline narratives that use structural ambition to deepen psychological character study. Those who prefer clean narrative arcs or definitive moral verdicts may find the novel's open questions frustrating rather than enriching.
- About John Boyne
- John Boyne is an Irish novelist and writer.
- What are the main themes?
- Boyne has stated that the major themes of All the Broken Places are guilt, complicity, and the cycles of grief arising from world-shaking events. The novel interrogates how much moral accountability a child can bear given the circumstances of their upbringing — specifically, how culpable Gretel is for growing up the daughter of a man who ran Auschwitz, for the silence she chose in the aftermath, and for her belief that she bears partial responsibility for Bruno's death. Inherited complicity and the possibility of late-life moral reckoning run through both timelines, while the figure of Henry — described by The Guardian as ghost-like, recalling both Bruno and Gretel's past failures — draws the novel's two strands together.
- Is it a good book club pick?
- All the Broken Places is a strong book club choice for groups willing to engage seriously with contested moral territory. Kirkus Reviews predicts the ending will 'spark fierce debate among readers,' and the novel's refusal to deliver a clean verdict on Gretel's culpability — combined with the parallel it draws between her failure decades earlier and the moral crisis she faces in present-day London — gives readers genuinely divergent positions to argue from. The dual-timeline structure also offers natural discussion anchors across Gretel's girlhood in wartime Germany, her postwar years in Paris with her mother Elsa, and her present-day life in London.
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Age & Reading Level
Recommended age
Adult
Reading level
Adult
Content to know about
Best for: Adults — the novel's unflinching treatment of Holocaust complicity, inherited guilt, and a morally contested ending is directed at a mature adult readership.
Skip if you want the compressed, parable-like clarity of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas or prefer narratives with definitive moral resolutions.
Editorial Review
All the Broken Places is a historical fiction novel by John Boyne and a sequel to his novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, following Gretel Fernsby — now 91 years old and the older sister of Bruno — as she navigates a life-long reckoning with her origins as the daughter of a Nazi concentration camp commandant. Set across two timelines, the novel moves between Gretel's girlhood and young adulthood in postwar Europe and her present-day existence in a London mansion block, where a new family downstairs forces a moral confrontation she has long avoided. Kirkus Reviews calls it "a complex, thoughtful character study that avoids easy answers," while John Irving declares it a novel whose "magnitude and emotional impact" cannot be prepared for.
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