Children's Literature: When is a children's book for children? Or rather, when is a children's book also written for adults?
The enormous success of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, written for teens and seized upon by adults, confirmed that publishers had hit upon a magical, profitable category - books that can appeal to both growing and grown-up readers. But the tone had already been set through the voices of the young Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes, and even Hugo Hamilton in The Speckled People. Best-selling examples of adult worlds being viewed through children's eyes, these memoirs reminded us that the child's voice is the common voice. It's a language we all spoke once.
John Boyne's The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is being heavily marketed as the next crossover success. It's about a nine-year old, but is not for nine-year-olds, its evasive blurb tells us. "Usually we give some clues about the book on the cover, but in this case we think that would spoil the reading of the book." Open it, though, and it is quickly clear what the book is about. As we follow narrator Bruno's move from Berlin to a place where the only other children he sees are behind a fence and all wearing the same clothes, there are repeated references to the visit for dinner of a man called the "Fury" and Bruno's father's subsequent promotion to a job in "Out-With". For most readers the subject will be immediately clear. Obviously, it would be anachronistic for Boyne to use the word "Holocaust". Exactly why the publishers have avoided using the word might be a little more complicated.
All of which distracts from the story itself. Boyne, an Irish writer who has previously written three adult novels, is not the first writer to approach the subject from a child's point of view, but viewing it through the eyes of a commandant's son, rather than a concentration camp inmate, allows its subject to be seen in a most original light. Bruno is a nine-year old with most of the normal problems of children his age. He wants to explore, play with friends, visit his grandparents. He is developing a pre-teen insolence towards his parents, while his sister, he constantly reminds us, is a "Hopeless Case". Yet, Bruno is living on the other side of a fence behind which lies something utterly wicked. We understand this, but he does not. Instead, he sees only children he could be playing with, and people who lie down and don't get up. Eventually, he encounters another boy, Shmuel, with whom he shares a birthday. From opposite sides of the fence, they develop a friendship.
Boyne ensures that the horror - for both reader and narrator - is not wholly revealed until the end, although in Bruno we have a child who seems resolutely unobservant, clinging to his naivety long after it would likely have been wrenched from him. And having led us to an ending that manages to be quite devastating, Boyne follows it with an unnecessary final scene. Yet The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is a book that lingers in the mind for quite some time. It is a subtle, calculatedly simple and ultimately moving story. For any age.
Shane Hegarty is an Irish Times journalist
The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas By John Boyne David Fickling Books, 216pp. £10.99
