1001. Before you die

1. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Saturday – Ian McEwan
3. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
4. Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
5. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
6. The Sea – John Banville
7. The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
8. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
9. The Master – Colm Tóibín
10. Vanishing Point – David Markson
11. The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
12. Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
14. Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
15. The Colour – Rose Tremain
16. Thursbitch – Alan Garner
17. The Light of Day – Graham Swift
18. What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon

The boy in the striped pyjamas – john boyne

 I went in really hoping to love this book, to be moved by it even. I had read so many reviews and even saved the film for after the reading so I could compare. It wasn’t so much that the book was bad but even for a “teen” read it is just so simple. One thing could have saved it, changing Bruno’s age to five and his sister’s to 8.  I find it hard to believe that a child of 9 could miss so many things and be so very clueless about the world around him, pronunciation, and his very own father. By nine he would be a Nazi in training wouldn’t he?

The book is an extremely easy read. Huge print, a mere 215 pages and the largest word I came across was “afternoon”.

I would say the simpleness of the book helped to deliver the eerie ending , but it could have been half as simple and still packed the same punch.

In theory this book is an intriguing idea but it wasn’t orchestrated quite as well as it could have been. Regardless of the flaws I give Bruno 3/5 stars for making me think.