I wasn't planning on reading this today. It fell from my new pile, and as I went to get coffee, I started to read and finished it in one sitting.

Original and devastating. A child "outside the fence" long before anyone knew what went on at a place he understands to be called "Out-With" where he's moved because his father has been promoted to commandant. The family is housed on the grounds and on day one Bruno sees what he imagines to be not very fun children across the field. He and his sister didn't want to move from Berlin, but what choice does a child have? So off they go to and nobody tells them much beyond they have to go. Since nobody tells them anything, they have to make it up for themselves and figure it out on their own. But how do you figure out the unimaginable?

They've always lived in the city, so the kids first decide that a lot of strange-seeming things just are because this is "the countryside;" he calls his father's boss "the Fury." Bruno is the son of an important man in a Nazi party, but he knows nothing about it. Why should he? Nobody knew anything about what was going on in those camps for a very long time. (Recall the reactions of the grown-up soldiers who liberated the camps or the newspaper accounts in the days afterward.)

It's apolitical and not historical. It's mostly a fable and readers will need to be very young and naive or willing to suspend belief for a few hours while they step into the shoes of a young German boy who does not have the benefit of history or being outside anything but his own, very small, world. (Bruno is nine, but it feels more like around six or so. He's certainly much younger than today's nine year old kids.)

Perhaps the best part of this book comes at the very end, after the whole story is over. The narrator says, "Of course all this happened a long time ago, and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age."

Talk about a gut punch.

And also an opening to what is going on in many parts of the world right now, has gone on in recent years, etc.

I'm now listening to an interview with the author and publisher. They discuss how many survivors, their children and grandchildren have read this book and decided that they should have their children read it. Marketed first as an adult book, it's a fable and would be OK for people of any age with some guard rails. If a child reads it, they will need a grown-up guide to fill in all of the things Bruno doesn't grasp. It's an opening conversation to both history and the way complacency, secrecy, prejudice, denial, and deceit have devastating consequences.

I have no words for how incredible this book is. The shortness of the novel made me underestimate it. The summary on the back of the book is quite mysterious too.

I think that everyone should read this book at least once in their lifetime. It's very subtle, very intense, and very hard-hitting and thought-provoking - especially when you get to the end. No, I haven't watched the film. I didn't even know there was a film based on this. I'd vaguely heard of the book and finally sat down to read it.

It's beautiful and haunting and has possible scarred me for life. Even now I'm still thinking about the ending. It's still constantly on my mind. Don't judge a book by its cover.

Although good and suspenseful story overall, I didn't like the approach to the theme. Younger readers - if this book was intended for them - won't understand much - if they are not familiar with the subject matter - because many things were left unsaid or misspelled. That's oftentimes alright to do for older readers and adults, they can easily read between the lines what was going on, but in this case I found it annoying, because I didn't understand the point of it. It was really hard to believe that Bruno would have been so oblivious of everything, that no one would tell him what was really going on, even Shmuel. And was it so necessary to hide and misspell everything? Maybe I misunderstood the intentions of the author, maybe it wasn't for the well-being of the younger readers, but to show how Bruno was sensitive and naive child, that much that he didn't want to repeat what he witnessed. The story will surely haunt me long after reading it, but I didn't like the style nonetheless.

After watching the movie and being absolutely heartbroken by the end, I really wanted to read the book when I found out there was one. I'm sad to say that I loved the movie, but found the book to be so-so