All The Broken Places

 

'Gripping and well-honed.

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consummately constructed, humming with tension.

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a defence of literature's need to shine a light on the darkest aspects of human nature and it does so with a novelist's skill, precision and power' 

'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

'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

Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby has lived in the same mansion block in London for decades.

She leads a comfortable, quiet life, despite her dark and disturbing past.

She doesn't talk about her escape from Germany over seventy years before.

She doesn't talk about the post-war years in France with her mother.

Most of all, she doesn't talk about her father, the commandant of one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps.

Then, a young 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 violent argument between Henry's mother and his domineering father, one that threatens Gretel's hard-won, self-contained existence.

Gretel is faced with a chance to expiate her guilt, grief and remorse and act to save a young boy - for the second time in her life.

But to do so, she will be forced to reveal her true identity to the world.

Will she make a different choice this time, whatever the cost to herself?

All the Broken Places is a devastating, beautiful story about a woman who must confront the sins of her past and a present in which it is never too late for bravery.