A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

Amy  

fiction

WOW!  This is likely going to be my favorite novel of the year.  This is amazing because it’s not fantasy, it’s not historical fiction, and it is about writers. Normally, I get tired of all the literature snobbery in books about writers. But this one lacks a lot of obscure literature references and the writing itself isn’t flowery or wordy at all, which often tends to happen in books about writing! Rather, the story is so fascinating!

A Ladder to the Sky is about one terrible person and his story is being told by four different characters  with whom he has, unfortunately, crossed paths.  The final story is told from his point of view. I must say I’ve never seen, in the same novel, so many changing points of view. This novel was sometimes written in first person, sometimes second person, and sometimes third person! The reader knows that each of these stories is going to turn out to be devastating but we cannot stop reading!  The pull to find out how everything resolves and to learn all the details around each of the situations is extremely compelling. I have rarely found myself so horrified and enraged by a novel that is not about war while still enjoying it so much!  A particularly funny line by one of the characters was the cherry on top of this fabulous novel.

This story also makes me wonder what sort of experiences John Boyne has had and whether he’s known characters like those within these pages.   His writing and storybuilding were outstanding.  I loved the ride.

The novel is told in sections, each of which has a different narrator on the audiobook. All were good, but each had his/her own flaw. I’m not sure which voices went with which sections so I’ll just list their names: Richard E. Grant, Robert Cordery, Nina Sosanya, and Laurence Kennedy.  I’ll give them a B+ rating as a group and blame the director for some of the most annoying flaws—discontinuity and poor character voicing choices.