Book review: Voices of self-torment sing loud in John Boyne’s atypically quiet novel
The first of a quartet of stories exploring trauma centres on a woman attempting to swim above a flood of abuse and betrayal
With the exception of the late Brian Moore, Boyne has been Ireland’s most chameleon-like Irish author, adept at absenting himself from his own work, while effortlessly exploring foreign landscapes and contrasting historical eras. He had already explored the worlds of Buffalo Bill Cody and the Edwardian poisoner Dr Crippen before he gained a worldwide audience with The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
He followed this with a deeply original slant on the mutiny on the Bounty, then a subtly expansive retelling of the myth of Anastasia (the murdered daughter of the last Russian Tsar, who was once believed to have survived), and then switched genres to explore the territory of Victorian ghost stories in This House is Haunted.
