All the Broken Places – John Boyne (2022)

All the Broken Places by John Boyne, published in 2022, is a poignant sequel to the acclaimed novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Revisiting the shadows of the Holocaust, this novel shifts its gaze to the older sister of the original book’s protagonist. Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby lives a quiet, affluent life in London, shrouded by the guilt and trauma of her past as the daughter of a Nazi commandant. When a troubled family moves in below her, Gretel is confronted with a choice that forces her to reckon with a lifetime of silence, complicity, and remorse.

Plot Summary

In the quiet elegance of a Mayfair apartment, Gretel Fernsby has spent decades behind the polished walls of Winterville Court, a building that exudes order and control – just the way she prefers her life. At ninety-one, she moves through her days with precise rituals, insulated from the world and the past she refuses to voice. But the past is not done with her. A letter arrives announcing the sale of the apartment below hers. Mr Richardson is gone, and the silence he left behind is about to be replaced by new, unsettling sounds. A boy’s laughter. A mother’s hurried footsteps. A father’s rising anger.

The arrival of a young family – a boy named Henry, his mother, and a domineering, volatile father – fractures the delicate shell Gretel has built. At first, she watches them from a distance, noting their routines, their presence. She is drawn to Henry, despite herself, despite the shame that echoes through her bones whenever a child draws near. His innocence and vulnerability mirror someone she once knew. Someone lost on the other side of a fence.

As Gretel’s days unfold, fragments of her past press forward with a growing urgency. Long before she was Mrs Fernsby, long before she was British by name and manner, she was a girl in Berlin. A daughter of a powerful man. A man whose legacy became synonymous with unspeakable crimes. She fled that world with her mother, settling briefly in Paris, concealed behind false names and fresh lies. But memory, like rot, seeps through even the strongest plaster. In the gardens of Paris, Gretel learned that even when dressed in beauty, a city can stink of pain. She met a boy, offered herself to shame and punishment, desperate to feel something more honest than survival. Her mother drowned in drink and delusion, clinging to men and forgetting her daughter’s face. Gretel, still a girl, watched the ruins of their lives pile up like the rubble of Berlin.

Years later, she would marry Edgar, a kind historian with a neatly trimmed moustache. He gave her stability, but not absolution. Their son, Caden, grew up in comfort but without the closeness she could never bring herself to give. Gretel remained a woman of distance – from her family, from the past, and most of all, from herself.

When Gretel befriends Henry, the boy downstairs, her carefully maintained boundaries begin to fray. The boy’s joy stirs longing. His bruises awaken dread. She hears the father’s rage spill through the walls and recognizes the particular silence of a woman who has learned to flinch. The mother, Madelyn, pretends nothing is wrong, but Gretel sees the fractures. She knows that kind of fear. She’s lived with it, fled from it, and once, she failed to stop it.

Gretel’s unease becomes obsession. She befriends Henry, cautiously at first, offering books and gentle company. But the child’s world is shrinking under the weight of his father’s fists, and Gretel senses the old question rising – will she act this time? Or remain, once more, a silent observer? Her neighbour, Heidi, now slipping into confusion, reminds her how easy it is to forget the truth. Yet in forgetting, guilt festers.

Time, in her life, folds in on itself. The past leaks into the present, no longer content to be exiled to the locked jewellery box on the wardrobe shelf. A photograph hidden for decades. A name spoken in secret. A memory of striped pyjamas, of laughter silenced, of innocence destroyed behind wire. Her brother, the little explorer, vanished in smoke. Her father, hanged for his crimes. Her mother, already dead in spirit before the drink took her body. There is no one left who remembers who she once was. Only Gretel remains, both witness and participant.

As Henry’s situation worsens, Gretel is forced to decide. Caden, ever concerned with inheritance and investments, urges her to sell the flat, move to a retirement village, and forget. He knows nothing of Henry, of the memories his presence stirs. He only sees property value and her decline. But Gretel has one last decision left to make. She confronts Madelyn, tries to offer help, but fear keeps the young woman silent. The boy continues to suffer.

Then one night, the violence erupts in earnest. The cries are louder. The silence more terrible. Gretel calls the police. She opens her doors. She refuses to be a bystander again. The revelation that follows is both expected and catastrophic – her identity, once buried beneath layers of falsehood and time, is exposed. The world learns who she is. Who her father was. The past catches up with her, not as retribution, but as reckoning.

Yet what emerges from the ashes is not ruin. For the first time in her life, Gretel chooses truth. Not the polished truth of survival, but the raw, trembling truth of accountability. She saves Henry. She becomes what she never managed to be – not a redeemer, but someone who did not turn away.

In the end, she sits in her flat, listening to the sounds from below. A boy laughing. A mother humming. Life, not memory, fills the space. The past cannot be undone. But it can be faced.

Main Characters

• Gretel Fernsby – The complex protagonist, Gretel is a woman shaped by war, guilt, and survival. At 91, she is reflective yet secretive, fiercely private yet increasingly disturbed by the presence of a young boy living beneath her. Her past as the daughter of a Nazi commandant haunts her, and her journey is one of reckoning, redemption, and fragile courage.

• Henry – A young boy who lives in the flat below Gretel. His innocence and vulnerability stir something deep within her – a painful reminder of her brother and a second chance at doing what is right. His life becomes the moral crucible for Gretel’s final test of conscience.

• Caden Fernsby – Gretel’s son, a man preoccupied with inheritance and practical matters. Though he visits regularly, their relationship is emotionally strained, marked by long-standing wounds and unspoken history, particularly her absence during his childhood.

• Heidi Hargrave – Gretel’s elderly neighbor and confidante. Heidi’s mental deterioration offers moments of levity, discomfort, and reflection, serving as both a mirror and contrast to Gretel’s own aging and secrets.

• Gretel’s Mother – A broken and alcoholic figure during their exile in Paris after the war. Her emotional detachment and moral ambiguity mirror Gretel’s own internal struggles and form a critical part of Gretel’s formative experiences.

• Rémy Toussaint – A charismatic and possibly dangerous man who enters Gretel’s post-war life through her mother. His presence represents the ongoing entanglement of charm and menace that Gretel often finds herself drawn to and wary of.

Theme

• Guilt and Complicity: Guilt forms the emotional nucleus of the story. Gretel’s reflections on her past, particularly her passive role during the Holocaust, unravel a lifelong struggle to separate innocence from inaction. The narrative examines how complicity can be born not just from deeds but from silence.

• Memory and the Burden of the Past: Memory in this novel is fragmented, invasive, and inescapable. Boyne constructs Gretel’s identity through her recollections, forcing readers to grapple with the persistent echo of history and the psychological scars it leaves.

• Redemption and Moral Reckoning: The story frames redemption not as erasure but as confrontation. Gretel’s opportunity to help Henry serves as a metaphorical do-over, demanding she break a lifetime of protective detachment to finally act justly.

• Intergenerational Consequences: Through Gretel and her strained relationship with her son, the novel interrogates how trauma, silence, and unresolved guilt transmit across generations, shaping not just individual fates but family legacies.

• The Duality of Identity: Living under an assumed name, Gretel navigates a layered identity that reflects the central question of whether a person can truly escape their origins. Her changing names, countries, and roles evoke a persistent crisis of self.

Writing Style and Tone

John Boyne employs a deeply introspective and elegiac tone throughout the novel. The prose is graceful yet weighted with emotional gravity, revealing the layers of Gretel’s psyche in long, reflective passages. The tone is confessional, tinged with irony and often melancholy, especially when juxtaposing Gretel’s present with her memories of youth and war.

Boyne’s writing shifts seamlessly between present-day London and flashbacks to post-war Paris and wartime Germany, creating a fragmented, non-linear narrative that mimics the way trauma resurfaces. The use of internal monologue enriches the psychological depth of the story, while dialogues are often sharp, layered with subtext, and laced with both compassion and cruelty. The novel’s structure, split into parts and interludes, allows for thematic breathing space and narrative contrasts that enhance the emotional and moral stakes of the plot.