The book tells the story of two boys growing up around the start of the second world war in Switzerland. One of the boys is from a privileged background, the other less fortunate, and the story looks at the different kinds of relationships they have with with each other and different people and the various types of love involved.
Before reading the book we hadn’t realised what it was like in Switzerland for Jewish people fleeing the Nazis and were shocked by the revelations.
In terms of the writing our views varied from thinking that the author wrote well through to thinking her sentence structure was poor. Most of us were in agreement that one of the main characters was very annoying and we wondered why his friend put up with him.
We gave the book a marking of 6 out of 10.