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See our website for details Stop Highland Radio are going to Scotland from Monday the 1st of May to Thursday the 4th of May with the very best of music And we would love for you to join us stay in at the four-star Crown Plaza Hotel in Glasgow We are bringing with us some of the biggest country stars including myself David James Declan Ernie and Robert Mazzal to name a few you will enjoy luxury travel to Glasgow three nights dinner bed and breakfast with music and entertainment each evening join us on the Highland fling to Glasgow this May for only 575 euro per person to book call Highland radio today on 07 4 9 1 25,000 early booking is advisable single supplement applies You're listening to Jean Cohen And you're very welcome back and as promised I have our book review and With us tonight is the first time where's Margaret O'Doherty and a Melda Quinn ladies. You're very welcome So Margaret, thank you so much for to ever agreeing to do it as it is nice to get new people in to do the book reviews and Just a little bird told me that you like reading and you're part of the riffle writers group That's right the diamond writers and riffle So you obviously have an interest in reading and and writing now and literature Margaret Well, that's that I mean you you can't write if you don't read like that's sort of one follows from from the other and It's when you when you do write even even a little but you read in a different way You look at it, you know how it's structured and how the the writer, you know gets you to think about things or highlights things Ramps up the emotion and brings it back down again raises tension So you start seeing things like that in books that maybe you wouldn't have if you didn't try to do it yourself And a Melda you were roped into this I would have I would have been reading since about five or six and one and I asked me in a blightened book And that was me apart from through college when I didn't read for leisure and when the kids were young I suppose I wouldn't have done much, but I didn't get back, you know, and I would It would be almost anything and everything but at the same time quite selective if that makes sense You know, but I love the Irish writers where possible. I do like to support them And have you read any John Boyne before this a few My brother's name is Jessica and the boys try pajamas obviously and history of loneliness and a few of the a lot of them tend to have sort of darker tones and Things but he's never shy about highlighting, you know, fantastic. So, what did you think of this book? just because maybe it's a story of Gretel as an after-write of the volume of straight pajamas. I think it was it was 2006 a boy in striped pajamas came out and he had intended to write a sequel to that ever since that but now he's done This so what did you think of the book? My first thought was why did he leave it so long? This was before I actually got the book. I Thought oh, it's a very worthy sequel Absolutely, and there's nearly too much in it. That would be my only Observation if you were trying to find a fault at all. There's just so many subplots and motifs and Inter-inter you know interrelated themes, but overall although there's a dark kind of a Background subject matter. It's so witty and spots, you know and the character Gretel I keep seeing Maggie Smith and if a film is ever made, you know, please got you again part and still be there to do it You know and just such a feisty person, you know But even for a 91 year old looking back at all she's gone through. She still has a great empathy and great great spirit and great life to work and Margaret What's the story about just gives a wee synopsis for those people who maybe haven't read it yet. Yeah Well, I mean it's as you say it's the follow-up for a sequel to the boy in the stripe pajamas but it's a very different book because it deals with his sister the Boy Bruno has sister Gretel was just slightly older than him and it starts after the war when the Her father has been tried and hanged as a war criminal and her and her mother then effectively go on the run And had an identity hate trying to hide their past and I suppose her whole life is spent hiding her past and That's the the main theme of it what what happens afterwards But it also has the other because it's told and To timelines the past and the present. There's also a storyline and the present with the people who live in her apartment block and That's how that mirrors in some ways her own life and things that happened when a little boy Comes to love immediately underneath her who was just about the same age as her brother was when he died so all that is tied up in it and As Imelda said there's a lot there's a lot going on And I suppose the fact that the book it spans six decades and it goes from her being sort of 12 13-year-old to 91 and I thought it he did that very very well, and he went from the past to present just almost seamlessly and Meldon would you agree with that? Yeah, there's times with other books this suppose, you know if you're finishing one chapter and it's sort of like the fire You want to go to the next chapter, but with this you need to go a couple of chapters You need to be you can't you know you might because of the Say the interspersing of the two timelines, but at the same time, you know the very vivid characters and very well portrayed and very believable characters, you know particularly even the the younger all the boys now the males in the book tend to come out I suppose It's cross my mind would be interesting to see what a male reviewer would make of the book because a lot of the characters With the exception maybe of Gretel's husband, you know our portrayed in has been domineering or some of them coercive Not very pleasant, but maybe that was his view of the world back in the day when it didn't have such a prominent role and You know the little boy downstairs his dad Alex was particularly Portrait is a nasty character, you know who just Obviously looking at it now you would say he had some psychological issues And problems, you know his wife was totally Coerced and you know he basically as he said at one stage. He felt he owned his wife and his son, you know Where as Gretel was and I suppose a psychologist or counsellor's would have a fee in the day with all the themes Cross my mind it would be a great and it would be a great item for a school syllabus I know my own son at some stage read the buying strike pajamas, but you know, there's so many old themes and current themes in it You know alcoholism dementia a whole host of things But I'm probably getting off your point There's enough love to cover in it, you know and elder abuse and you know a lot of It merits a merits a couple of readings. I'd have to say because there's bits you'll pick up Second-town round, you know, it's hard to get it all the first time and maybe just a meldica I just put you to bring a wee bit closer to the mic just Yeah, and I'll be perfect and Margaret we're talking about Gretel there. She's she's a great character And she's not always legible character No, and I mean it's written from her point of view obviously. She's an orator off the story So you often think there's parts that she's probably left out Details maybe that she isn't at some point She think she couldn't possibly have been that naive like she didn't survive this long if she was really Didn't see what was coming or didn't So I think there was an element of the unreliable narrator about her that you but another point She was quite hard on herself Sometimes I mean obviously she was only a child when these things happened. She didn't have influence over them and Yet she feels responsible for things that happened that she couldn't have probably changed She has to carry that with her Be aware of how other people would feel if they knew about her past So she's had and some respect to very difficult life and another time she would have to say well She did land on her feet. She married very well Her husband was very good to her and she had you know a very comfortable life after that so in some respects Obviously she was very lucky But you do wonder how much of the story because you're getting it from her point of view You always have to be aware well There may be another side to this story that she's not she's not telling that either deliberately or Not deliberately that she's just blocked out parts of it And I think Looking at John Boyne himself the notes he had at the end of it He said that this was a book about guilt and clump is and come complicity And I suppose there's two ways of looking at Gretel did feel guilty in a way About well about her brother's death She felt that she was some way responsible for him going over the fence into the concentration camp and I switch and also she felt guilty maybe that she could have done more to bring some of the War criminals to justice, but do you think that that she was so earn herself a Melda? Oh, I think she was she was very severe in herself at times. I mean You know from her teenage years It was the one thing that dominated through her life and she you know now I hadn't considered markets and at the very valid viewpoint that I didn't consider the fact that there may have been some things She didn't tell us, but she does say you know She sort of she cut herself off to an extent. She you know She lost out on personal friendships and intimate relationships She was always on her guard and just keeping a distance from people You know and she might have got more from life herself if she had been able to relate to people, you know and Looking back now I suppose we would say that if she'd had if she'd ever opened up to somebody who was a professional in the day that you know She might have thought things through and realized that you know, there was only she much she could have done and You know Kurt I thought who's a different character. He was PA so to speak for her dad in the camp. He has a very At one point he does admit that he has some guilt But he says you know, it's with them always, but he doesn't let it dominate his life You know and that's although he's portrayed as a not nice character at the same time It's a you tend to think if she had only thought along the same lines She might have not been so severe on herself and you know the fact that she Never revealed her true identity to various people that some we haven't yet discussed Just feel sorry for her that it preoccupied every action and every thought and You know even Say the the relationships that she had with other people are the lack there of And I suppose we were talking a lot about Gretler, but there's some other very Important characters in the book and I suppose there's the the parent son relationships as well She's got a very greedy son and her neighbor Heidi has a son that maybe is out to father's own nest as well They can't wait until get there and hear it and did you how did you find those relationships Margaret? Yeah, it was quite interesting the that her son I suppose as portrayed has been quite selfish and Maybe a bit of an air do well. He's been married three or four times And but she also blames herself for her son's feelings Because she feels she was a bad mother and that she wasn't able to relate to him So she I suppose indulges him to a certain extent as well but Like as Amelda said earlier, none of the men in this book come out very well They they don't have I mean they're probably not as well rounded as the the characters as the female characters Even even the more minor female characters like her friend is a much more rounded character than the central male Characters and that probably is one one fault that you would say about the writing that he hasn't Supposed developed that nobody's all bad or all good And I suppose the the novel shifts from the present day to back to where they flee Germany to France And then she goes to as far away from Europe as you can to Australia to try to escape her past and in fact to London again But she never seems to be able to escape from it It's always there and she runs into Kurt in Australia and then there's another story there that never would have expected and then she comes back then to London she falls in love with a Jew and You know that her there's so many things happening in the book and it was so full of surprises I thought that was something that John pointed very well Amelda that You know you sort of read the page the next day. Oh my goodness. Where did that come from? Yeah, there were numerous now The revelation we haven't got to hide yet that was her She had a daughter with David the Jew who she fell in love with in London. He worked in Harrods And she subsequently married Edgar who was David's colleague because when she revealed her true History to David she wanted to do that before he would allow her to to enter his life in a major way and He of course then had a sad background to and his parents and a sister had died in the Holocaust so and This is a point she When she moved onwards then Sorry Tray a little bit the You know that that it was full of surprises. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean I suppose hopefully Anybody that's listening has either read it or won't be reading the book for quite a while But and it's so sad that If I can mention the her neighbor who lived across the hallway from her Heidi who transpired was the daughter that she'd had with David the Jew and a few other ones then When she met Kurt back in Sydney again, this is going backwards and she actually kidnapped his young son Which seemed totally out of character Now whether she what motivated her to do that. It's hard to say whether she felt I think she felt that Kurt had also been implicated to an extent in the death of her brother And he had encouraged him to play across the fence and back at the camp And whether she just wanted him to to feel the loss or to to feel a shock but as she realized they were sort of had a mutual self-destruction sort of Not a pact going on He clarified to her that, you know, he told her to let the authorities be aware of his issues But in revealing his identity she would obviously be revealing her own backstory and he's said to her, you know I'll go to prison or whatever, but you'll have books written about you, which was a bit ironic You know and there were a few others then well obviously that the very end where she after all her reservations about Being sort of an isolated individual and not getting involved in other people's business and been warned by Alex the neighbor downstairs who was a Henry's dad been warned to stay away. She she was so concerned with You know the the welfare of Henry the young lad who was about the same age as her brother had been when he died That she took matters into her own hands and really didn't see what was coming when she dispatched him and then Subsequently went to her son's wedding the next day Another good night's sleep and then handed herself in and as she said she she didn't tell any lies And you know, she she didn't have to give away much of her father's detail to the authorities But at the end of the day she ended up in a prison cell As several people have said she should do for the rest of her days But ironically she was doing it in the most empathetic Fashion to to help another individual so I'd like to think that even though she ended up in prison She was happy with why she'd got there and You know what she was what she was doing. Would you recommend? Would you would you recommend the book to? The listeners tonight. Oh, absolutely. Mm-hmm and out of ten. What would you give it? nine and a half And what about yourself Margaret? I don't think I would be quite quite so generous I would say maybe seven and a half because there I think he has particularly the male characters weren't fully developed And that you know, it could have maybe had a little more It you could have seen things maybe from another point of view as well as just from hers Well, I think I enjoyed it. I think I would give it nine out of ten I did I thought it was very well put together and I would recommend To the listeners to read and I've read a few of his books And I think this might be the one that I like like the best, but I think I think it's well worth a buy anyway Well ladies, thank you so much for taking time out tonight to come and review the book and this is it once you're in It's very hard to get out So thank you so much and and we'll be calling on you again