John Boyne's A Ladder to the Sky

 
I don't usually read books by the same author within a few weeks of each other, but after reading The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne in July, I was eager to read his latest novel, 'A Ladder to the Sky.' In the late 1980s, Maurice Swift, an aspiring young writer, meets moderately successful novelist Erich Ackermann in Berlin. Erich falls in love with Maurice and reveals a long-held secret from his childhood in Nazi Germany.

Maurice later publishes a novel based on Erich's secret to great praise, but it fails to replicate the success of his debut. He can write average prose, but ideas, plots, and characters do not come naturally to him, so he seeks out other people's stories, going to extreme lengths to pass them off as his own.

Boyne, like in 'The Heart's Invisible Furies,' alternates between biting satire and tragedy. On the satirical side, he brilliantly ridicules the literary world's pretentiousness, particularly the publishing industry's obsessions with awards, sales, reputation, and petty rivalries, raising several ethical questions along the way about plagiarism, the blurring of non-fiction and fiction, and the origins of ideas and who can claim credit for them.

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Maurice's stint as a literary magazine editor is especially well done, and brief cameos by Gore Vidal and Maude Avery, the latter a character from 'The Heart's Invisible Furies,' are a nice touch. On a more serious note, few authors write as movingly about shame, guilt, embarrassment, and unrequited love or lust as Boyne, and the first part, in which Erich reveals the secret from his past, is very moving.

Boyne convincingly portrays Maurice's psychopathic behavior, which oscillates between charming and ruthless, even if his crimes become a little far-fetched towards the end. I wondered why Maurice didn't pursue a much more lucrative career in something like tabloid journalism, where his talent for exploiting the stories of vulnerable people could have earned him a lot of money. However, it is clear that he is drawn to the mythical status and romanticized lifestyle of being a celebrated novelist and will go to any length to achieve his goal, regardless of who pays the ultimate price along the way.

If you don't mind having your credulity stretched slightly in places, 'A Ladder to the Sky' is a very entertaining and compelling piece of psychological literary fiction. Thank you to Random House UK and Transworld for providing me with a review copy of 'A Ladder to the Sky' through NetGalley.










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