All the Light We Cannot See
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 
Blurb: 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 she 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.Okay, this is a hard book to review... For the most part I enjoyed it, but I also found it very slow going. It was like a monotone all the way through with few up and downs, and then parts that should have been faster paced or more exciting or scary weren't. Perhaps it was the writing style; although I enjoyed the style of writing and the short chapters like snap shots of their lives, this book just didn't hook me like I thought it would.I liked the characters, I thought they were well developed and they grew throughout the story and I think the author portrayed perfectly how easy it was for people, especially children, to be brainwashed by all the German propaganda. I also liked how everything linked together; a little detail that seemed insignificant at first, later wove into something that was vital. Also, the backwards and forwards in time kept me interested, since I think I probably would have been bored if everything had happened in chronological order. All in all, this book ticked so many boxes and clearly many people love it - it won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 2015 - but it was just the pace with stopped me from really loving it. Once I was reading it, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't one of those books which hooked me and kept me coming back for more...
My favourite quotes from 'All the Light We Cannot See':'Open your eyes ... and see what you can with them before they close forever.' ' "Nearly every species that has ever lived has gone extinct, Laurette. No reason to think we humans will be any different." ' ' "You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. ..." ' ' "Don't tell lies. Lie to yourself, Werner, but don't lie to me." ' " 'I don't want to make trouble, Madame.' 'Isn't doing nothing a kind of troublemaking?' 'Doing nothing is doing nothing.''Doing nothing is as good as collaborating.' " " 'Don't you want to be alive before you die?' " ' "Don't you ever get tired of believing, Madame? Don't you ver want proof?" ' 'Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.' 'He made her the glowing hot centre of his life: he made her feel as if every step she took was important.' 'What the war did to dreamers.'
Blurb: 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 she 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.Okay, this is a hard book to review... For the most part I enjoyed it, but I also found it very slow going. It was like a monotone all the way through with few up and downs, and then parts that should have been faster paced or more exciting or scary weren't. Perhaps it was the writing style; although I enjoyed the style of writing and the short chapters like snap shots of their lives, this book just didn't hook me like I thought it would.I liked the characters, I thought they were well developed and they grew throughout the story and I think the author portrayed perfectly how easy it was for people, especially children, to be brainwashed by all the German propaganda. I also liked how everything linked together; a little detail that seemed insignificant at first, later wove into something that was vital. Also, the backwards and forwards in time kept me interested, since I think I probably would have been bored if everything had happened in chronological order. All in all, this book ticked so many boxes and clearly many people love it - it won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 2015 - but it was just the pace with stopped me from really loving it. Once I was reading it, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't one of those books which hooked me and kept me coming back for more...My favourite quotes from 'All the Light We Cannot See':'Open your eyes ... and see what you can with them before they close forever.' ' "Nearly every species that has ever lived has gone extinct, Laurette. No reason to think we humans will be any different." ' ' "You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. ..." ' ' "Don't tell lies. Lie to yourself, Werner, but don't lie to me." ' " 'I don't want to make trouble, Madame.' 'Isn't doing nothing a kind of troublemaking?' 'Doing nothing is doing nothing.''Doing nothing is as good as collaborating.' " " 'Don't you want to be alive before you die?' " ' "Don't you ever get tired of believing, Madame? Don't you ver want proof?" ' 'Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.' 'He made her the glowing hot centre of his life: he made her feel as if every step she took was important.' 'What the war did to dreamers.'
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