Review: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Book: All The Light We Cannot See

Author: Anthony Doerr

Pages: 531

I read: The Kindle version

I read it in: 5-6 hours

Plot Summary: Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When Marie-Laure is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Thoughts and Review: I simply loved this book! It is well written, it is about a topic that is close to my heart- the big and small tragedies of wars- and it has a lovely cast of characters. Needless to say, I highly, highly recommend this book, especially, if you like reading about stories set during World War II or more so, if you are interested in reading about what else went on in Germany (apart from the Holocaust) during World War II. Here's a quick list of everything I loved about this book: 

• Like I mentioned above, the writing is stellar. It is beautiful, evocative and pithy. I love when beautiful writing is also precise and does not meander about the place too much. 

• The setting and premise of All The Light We Cannot See is very interesting. One the one hand, we have Marie-Laure's story. Marie-Laure goes blind when she is six but with her steely determination and a lot of gentle encouragement from her father, who is a locksmith and a puzzle box maker, she learns to navigate the streets of Paris and, later, of Saint-Malo. Marie-Laure's father, Daniel LeBlanc, works in the Museum of Natural History as a locksmith and when the Germans invade Paris, Daniel is entrusted with a large, expensive and rare diamond called 'The Sea of Flames' or a replica of it to carry to a secondary location. Marie-Laure and Daniel leave a chaotic Paris and via a series of events end up at Saint-Malo to live with Marie-Laure's great-uncle, Etienne. 

• Marie-Laure's life in the 'tall, narrow house' in Saint-Malo, the people she meets, the events that occur once the town falls to the Germans and how she and Etienne become a part of the French Resistance make for an interesting and compelling narrative. The wonderful writing brings the coastal walled city of Saint-Malo alive and you feel like you are almost there watching everything first hand. Marie-Laure's story is one of adjustment with her changed circumstances and immense courage and spirit for doing the right thing even if it is full of danger. 

• Werner Pfennig is our second protagonist. We first see Werner as a smart, quiet and little 11 year old, who has a natural genius for maths and all things electronic. Werner and his little sister- Jutta- are orphans and they live in an "orphan farm" looked after by a gentle lady called Frau Elena. Werner and Jutta are both bright kids and Werner wants nothing more than to leave their little mining town, where all boys, the moment they turn 15, have to go work in the mines. Werner finds a broken radio and instinctively puts it together. The brother-sister duo use their radio to listen to a late night science for kids type of a broadcast in French- this soon becomes the absolute highlight of their lives and they both dream of a life of education and getting a chance to actually work in a science lab. Werner and Jutta (and kids like them) are the victims of war that we don't get to hear much about at all. They belong to a generation that was too young to fight when the war started and grew up witnessing horrors that no child ought to. Their simple dreams and the impossibility of those coming to fruition during war is one of those little heartbreaking tragedies. 

• I really loved all the stories set in Germany- the ones we get to see from following Werner as he gets accepted into an elite military school for boys. We get to see how even those who are not made of the alpha-stuff and who completely lack any violent tendencies get recruited into Hitler's war machine. We see gentle boys become killers or how their refusal to do so gets them brutally bullied. We see the inner conflict of Werner as he keeps questioning how his genius for maths and electronics is being used during the war to kill people in the Resistance. We see soldiers just doing their jobs and we see soldiers who really enjoy the brutal business of killing. All in all, it makes for very interesting reading. 

• Werner and Marie-Laure's stories converge in Saint-Malo in an interesting and unexpected way. I loved reading about the two of them together and I wish there was more of that, though it wouldn't have been very realistic at all. 

• I also loved strong and determined Jutta, who even as a child, was very clear on where she stood on the war and how she didn't want Werner to go to military school. We also get to see an older Jutta and she is just as admirable. 

• There were so many lovely characters in this book. Frau Elena, the matron of the orphan farm, who was like a mother to all the kids and looked after them kindly. She stoically stood by her girls even in the brutal aftermath of the war. Then we have Madame Manec, who was Etienne's housekeeper. An old lady, who was reluctant to just sit by and see the Germans ruin their town. She mobilized the women of the town to participate in the Resistance and even enlists Marie-Laure to do the same. Then there is Fredrick, a gentle, bird-loving boy who had to join the military school to please his rich, Nazi parents but refused to participate in the brutal bullying and who knew and accepted that he didn't have full control over his own life in these trying times.

Rating: 5/5
Definitely go read this book. It is brilliantly written and you will just fall in love with the characters in it.