From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan …
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work
This was so well written. I love Doerr's beautiful descriptive style and the way he interweaves the stories of the characters intricately together.
Minus half a star because it didn't make me shed as many tears as such a powerful story should have. I can't really tell why. Maybe it was just my mood and I may need to reread it sometime and update my rating o 5 stars. Its definitely worth a read and a reread in any case.
I was a bit skeptical of the buzz when this came out. It sounded weird. But, turns out it was just as good as the reviews - humane, interesting and thought-provoking.
An honor and great pleasure to have read this book
No rating
Strangely enough most reviews I've read said that this book was about WWII.
True the events in the book do occur during that war but to me WWII was more like a prop than the subject of the work.
Basically we see the the drama through the eyes of two children, a French blind girl (in her case of course it's more "we feel") and a German boy.
But in fact it's much more about their respective internal worlds than about the war as such and if only to read how a young 15 years old blind girl first discovers the ocean, it's gigantic might and incredible mildness for the first time by sounds, smells and feelings on her skin is worth the effort (or in my case pleasure).
Review of 'All the light we cannot see' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
As most stories are about this horrible time in history its a great but sad fiction about what happened to the ppl on both sides and everything in between. I loved it, however the time jumping back and forth was confusing to me and i lost track on when i was in the story even tho i knew it was a chapter meant to be from future in. It could have been set up better on these parts. But its a great book, one of the better of its kind!
Review of 'All the light we cannot see' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This book is... fiction, so while it may convey some emotion some people felt surviving World War II, it's difficult to know, because Doerr removed the anchor to reality in order to accommodate a too-precious dollop of narrative parallelism.
It's difficult to know, because many people who went through those times wouldn't talk about them. Toward the end, did starvation and stress wear people down into mad vegetables? Did people who compromised their ethics and ideals, in order to survive, truly question their decisions and feel guilt over what they did, like everyone in this book seems to, or did they rationalize it away like a normal person? It's unsatisfying, because it's difficult to know.
Review of 'All the Light We Cannot See' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
When talk turns to books, I still ask if the person has read this one. It left a lasting impression on me, particularly about the aftermath of war, when participants return to "normal" world as if life could go on, and it does.
Review of 'All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is a very, very sad book. It was hard to read but excellently written. I sort of recommend it but not if you're looking for something happy to read.
Why do award-winning books have to always be so depressing?
Review of 'All the Light We Cannot See' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This is a beautifully written book. If you enjoy reading for the sheer pleasure of beautiful prose, you'll love this book. Doerr's descriptions are beautiful and poetic and thoughtful, especially as he describes the world from blind Marie-Laure's point of view.
Aside from the beautiful writing though, the actual story didn't fully grip me. I liked it, I just didn't love it. In addition, the constant shifting of time frame was just annoying. The book primarily follows two main characters, both children: Werner, a German boy who lives in an orphanage with his sister and is fascinated with electronics and engineering, and Marie-Laure, a blind French girl who lives with her locksmith father in Paris and later in the small town of Saint-Malo when they flee from the bombing to stay with her great-uncle. You could consider a third "character" to be the rare diamond called the Sea of Fire, …
This is a beautifully written book. If you enjoy reading for the sheer pleasure of beautiful prose, you'll love this book. Doerr's descriptions are beautiful and poetic and thoughtful, especially as he describes the world from blind Marie-Laure's point of view.
Aside from the beautiful writing though, the actual story didn't fully grip me. I liked it, I just didn't love it. In addition, the constant shifting of time frame was just annoying. The book primarily follows two main characters, both children: Werner, a German boy who lives in an orphanage with his sister and is fascinated with electronics and engineering, and Marie-Laure, a blind French girl who lives with her locksmith father in Paris and later in the small town of Saint-Malo when they flee from the bombing to stay with her great-uncle. You could consider a third "character" to be the rare diamond called the Sea of Fire, which has been hidden in the museum where Marie-Laure's father works and which the Germans are trying to track down. There's a legend the stone is cursed so that only evil will befall the loved ones person who has it. Marie-Laure and her family are involved in trying to hide the stone and are brought into danger because of it.
Werner enters the Hitler Youth and soon is called into active service despite being too young, due to his talent with electronics. He's told to find a way to triangulate on radio signals being sent by the resistance so the radios (and their operators) can be destroyed. Although he himself doesn't do the killing, he travels around with a small team causing the deaths of hundreds of radio operators. Eventually his path crosses with Marie-Laure's because her great-uncle is helping the resistance send radio messages to allied forces. He ends up "saving her life three times," as she counts it. She gives him a small model house her father made that eventually allows Werner's sister to track down Marie-Laure long after the war ends so we get a partial closure on the story.
Anyway. Things I didn't like: the author makes EXCESSIVE use of jumping back and forth in time. One minute you're reading about Marie-Laure at the end of the war, the next before the war. One minute Werner is in Saint-Malo being bombed by allied forces, the next minute he's a child listening to a radio broadcast by Marie-Laure's grandfather that teaches him the basics of science. And on to several steps in between also. I don't mind some flash-forwards or flash-backs when it makes sense but I really can't see any reason so many were needed here and in such a confusing arrangement. Second thing I didn't like: there just seemed a lot left unresolved at the end, and a lot that could have been done with the story but wasn't. When Werner's sister and Marie-Laure do meet, they exchange almost no information and separate without either of them really learning much the other person knows. Marie-Laure's father's ultimate fate seems oddly unresolved and pointless. Werner's ultimate fate also seems oddly abrupt and pointless. And the diamond's ending is also vague. Perhaps the point here is that war and death are pointless, and that's a valid point to make in a book, but it doesn't seem to be made with conviction either, just kind of feels as if both their stories trail off vaguely without driving any point home. And the beautiful diamond that's supposedly cursed but which nobody can bear to let go once they see it -- surely the blind Marie-Laure is the obvious choice here to dispose of the cursed gem into the sea, since she can't see it to be dazzled by it. And she kind of tries, but it seems almost an afterthought, and then the details are never explained. Felt like something more could be made out of that part of the story.
In the end I found it somewhat interesting and beautiful prose, but I didn't really feel attached to any of the characters and the number of unanswered questions at the end didn't make for a satisfying ending. I can't remember having read a story about WWII and not shedding a single tear but this one was a first, there's just no emotion in there. The writing felt beautiful but impersonal.
Review of 'All the Light We Cannot See' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A moving and endearing story with great characters. Tends toward fancy, excessively detailed descriptions of settings, but I should have expected that from the Pulitzer seal on the cover.
Review of 'All the Light We Cannot See' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
An enduring best seller and one of the few books you'll see that has a sympathetic WWII-era Nazi in it. Don't let its thickness scare you; it's not a 530-page book, it's a 300 page book. There's tons of air in it because its chapters are seldom longer than three pages. The chapters shift back and forth between the two main characters and in time and sometimes reading it is like watching a table tennis match. But don't let that keep you from it. Despite the brevity of the chapters, there's lots going on, both in the story and the writing. Doerr has the gift of phrasing and it's so subtle you'll want to make yourself slow down. This is a novel worthy of studying and discussing with others, the better to get more out of it.
Review of 'All the light we cannot see' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I've been left feeling really underwhelmed by this book, I was so looking forward to it, Pulitzer prize winner, good reviews from friends and one of the most impressive plots I've come across in a book. But the writing is poor, reminds me of [b:The Da Vinci Code|968|The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)|Dan Brown|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1303252999s/968.jpg|2982101] at times, really rushed and no passion from the author. With the time the plot takes part you would expect to be shocked at some of the things that were happening, but I was left felling Meh! as a 14 yr old boy gets slapped around the face with a rubber hose, something has gone wrong if that scene makes you feel nothing.
The book was set for a 2* rating, but the last 15% of the book was what I was expecting, some exciting drama, moving scenes and really well written, it was like …
I've been left feeling really underwhelmed by this book, I was so looking forward to it, Pulitzer prize winner, good reviews from friends and one of the most impressive plots I've come across in a book. But the writing is poor, reminds me of [b:The Da Vinci Code|968|The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)|Dan Brown|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1303252999s/968.jpg|2982101] at times, really rushed and no passion from the author. With the time the plot takes part you would expect to be shocked at some of the things that were happening, but I was left felling Meh! as a 14 yr old boy gets slapped around the face with a rubber hose, something has gone wrong if that scene makes you feel nothing.
The book was set for a 2* rating, but the last 15% of the book was what I was expecting, some exciting drama, moving scenes and really well written, it was like it was by a different author. If the rest of the book had been written like that then I would have considered this a modern day masterpiece.
Hope they make a movie of this, would be pretty good.
