What readers think of A Ladder to the Sky, plus links to write your own review.

He's hard to like ....but very difficult to stop wanting to see what he does next. this is not a book I would usually read but I am very glad I did. it is dark but so compelling!

Almost didn't finish this book - I had this feeling that something very evil was about to happen and put the story away for a few days. I have to stay that the Maurice was a despicable character - and when I decided to try again to read this book, I became hooked. This author does draw the reader into the plot and you wonder what evil will Maurice commit next. I don't think this is a book for everyone, but I did enjoy it.

John Boyne is a masterful writer and with A Ladder to the Sky, has created a saga of one man's life -- from a beautiful young man to an alcoholic with self-realization of what his "natural state" is. Maurice is consumed with ambition, a man who allows himself to become a leach, attaching himself to others and in doing so authors his own demise.

Ambition, arrogance, jealousy, suspicion, superiority, punishment, selfishness, even a touch of discrimination --- all are threads of a carefully woven plot. Maurice is devious, yes, but is a master of wit where he genuinely has a way with words.

This is a compelling read although at times too graphic for me.

Margo Channing, meet Maurice Swift, your successor to the crown of bald-faced ambition.

Aside from my extreme prejudice to love anything John Boyne writes, I found myself feeling a bit anxious about 1/3 of the way into "A Ladder to the Sky." At this point, I had no great positive feeling for any of the characters and only a sinking feeling that things would get worse. And worse they got but along with way, I came to appreciate this chilling look at the literary business proving that politics is not the only venue for back-stabbing vitriol. It is a masterfully-crafted character study of Maurice Swift seen from the eyes of two of his victims as well as himself.

For some reason, I have always seen writing as a noble profession with little of the ugliness that can be encountered in more pedestrian careers. But "A Ladder to the Sky" indicates that it is subject to the same ugliness of human nature as other vocations. Maurice Swift is the epitome of the professional climber and his single-minded pursuit of success gets progressively more violent as the story progresses. At first, he is simply careless with the feelings of others but the casualties of his ambition get progressively worse the longer he goes unchecked.

It is a frightening story well told.

Maurice Swift is a villain that you will love to hate! In John Boyne's book "A Ladder to the Sky" Maurice just wants to be a successful author. It is what he was born to do. Now he just needs the story and he will go to treacherous extremes to get it. This book is an enjoyable, entertaining read. It reminded me of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" by Patricia Highsmith. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to read books that do not fall into any specific genre!

This is a book to love or to hate. The main character Maurice Swift is at his best an arrogant and gorgeous looking man, manipulative, narcissistic, deadly, perhaps a sociopath — someone we love to hate. Maurice wants to be a writer, a famous writer; unfortunately for him, for however well he crafts a sentence, he has no ideas of his own to pursue and the stories fall flat. How about the stories from and by others? If the book were not so deliciously written, even in its somewhat predictable plot line, I would not have finished it with a mischievous smile on my face.

This novel failed to impress me like some of Boyne's former works. I struggled to find redeeming qualities in the protagonist and simply never came up with anything. The plot tended to ramble with the extensive character development of Maurice Swift and his "acquaintances ". I found myself often losing interest and longing to skip ahead to the end. The sexual overtones felt somewhat forced and lent themselves to the unpleasant character who is Mr. Swift. Overall, a decent read but not one of my personal favorites.

Powerthesaurus.org has 913 synonyms for the word despicable. If there are even more words for despicable I would lump them together to describe Maurice Swift, the novel's main character. The author is very gifted in character development. It is Swift's innate evilness that propels the novel and this is what kept me reading.

I didn't like the subject matter of the book, but the author's gift of creating interesting characters held my attention. This is one of those books where I really needed to see how it would end. I only glanced at a few pages of the last chapter. This didn't help me much.

John Boyne has a way of getting me emotionally involved in his characters, especially Swift in this book.