The story is well-written but its plot is clichéd; nonetheless Erich, still smitten, offers to hire Swift as an assistant as he travels across Europe.
The novel's third section, set in the late '90s, is written in the second-person by Edith Camberley, a Black British writer whom Swift has married.
Daniel gets into a fight with a girl from his private school, and Maurice reminisces on the one genuine romantic relationship of his life: a clandestine romance with another schoolboy during his teen years, which ended when he was caught by his headmaster and then sexually abused.
Drunk and lonely, Maurice admits first to seducing Erich and Dash, then to stealing Edith's manuscript, and then finally confesses his greatest shame: back in New York he had written an autofictional version of his life story, which Daniel read; desperate, Maurice seized his inhaler, and watched his distraught son die of an asthma attack.
Moreover, he reveals that he had deliberately altered his appearance to resemble the late Daniel, to establish rapport with Maurice, and that the biography he's writing is actually about his great-uncle, Erich Ackermann.
He participates in a creative writing program at his prison; when his cellmate dies, Maurice reads his story, notes that it's quite good, and decides to send it to a publisher.
"[2] Writing in The Guardian, Hannah Beckerman called it "an ingeniously conceived novel that confirms Boyne as one of the most assured writers of his generation.