Some moral ambiguity is imported by an enjoyably sensational finale, but I would have appreciated more along the way, and a slower burn – for the sake of greater eroticism – as the relationship between the principals begins during training at Aldershot. The book is neatly structured and effortlessly readable, perhaps by virtue of being too direct. The story is narrated by Tristan, and we cut between his trepidatious visit to Will's older sister in Norwich in 1919, and his experience in the war.
It depicts a relationship between two soldiers, Tristan Sadler and Will Bancroft, the latter of whom gravitates towards being the most extreme form of conscientious objector, refusing any role at all in the campaign: an absolutist. The Absolutist is another wartime story, but this time it's the first world war. When any two of his characters appear, the reader knows there's going to be not only a scene, but a "scene", in the sense of some initial niceties followed by anxious mangling of sodden handkerchiefs, giving way to raised voices and probably concluding in a resonant slamming of doors. It was contended by some that Boyne, a young Irishman, had no right to visit such highly charged territory, to which he gracefully responded by asking whether only the people who were in the camps were entitled to write about them, and pointing out that his own work might lead readers to other books, "better than my own", on the same subject.īoyne is a popular novelist also in that he concentrates on emotions – and big ones at that.
He certainly is that, in the literal sense that his novel for younger readers, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – concerning the friendship between the son of a concentration camp commandant and a child inmate – has sold 5m copies. J ohn Boyne is the kind of writer described as a "popular novelist".
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