Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
I have just finished reading this amazing novel, and I am unsure of how to approach it as a reviewer. In truth, I am in awe of it. I approach it as I might approach a priceless painting or sculpture in a museum: afraid to touch it in fear of shattering the illusion. It’s a fairly long novel without a single extraneous word. It is complex, jumping from one time frame to another and one character to another in short but intense chapters, but it is easy to follow and never for a moment did I lose the story’s thread. It is a near perfect work of art.
Who would have thought that a novel about World War II could resonate so deeply in this modern era? And yet it does. It escapes its historical trappings and becomes universal. It gives every one of its characters, from the most vulnerable to the most ostensibly evil, profound motivations for their behaviors and intricate though sometimes succinctly expressed backgrounds. Within a very short time after you commence reading it, you will find it very difficult to put down.
The story begins with the Allied bombing of Saint-Malo, a town on the coast of France where a teenage girl named Marie-Laure lives with her great uncle. Marie-Laure became blind when she was six years old. When the Germans invaded France, she and her father fled Paris for Saint-Malo. Her father worked in a museum and carried with him a valuable diamond known as the Sea of Flames. A parallel story tells of a German boy named Werner, a whiz with radios and electronics, who is sent to a brutal military school and is conscripted into the Nazi army at the age of sixteen. A further plotline concerns the evil Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel, an expert in gems who ruthlessly hunts for the Sea of Flames through various Nazi-held territories. The horrors of war are vividly described as the story progresses, but these awful realities are mitigated by the love, tenderness, and compassion of those caught up in the conflict, who seek to survive and protect their loved ones as chaos and disaster erupt all around.
As the story progresses, Doerr expertly draws the various threads tighter and tighter until they all come together at the Battle of Saint-Malo. I have read more novels than I could ever count, and yet seldom have I encountered a book as superbly crafted as this one. Most novels of this length have weaknesses such as occasional ponderous descriptions, pontifications of the author, or pointless digressions. Doerr avoids these errors. The writing is focused throughout, always clear and sharp and on-point. I have a certain time in my daily schedule that I designate for reading, but with this book it was extremely difficult to avoid going overtime for just one more chapter, and then another, and so on. In short, this novel is well worth reading. Don’t let the World War II setting, which has been used so often in the past in innumerable books and films, put you off. This novel far transcends its background; its themes and insights, as I mentioned above, are universal. Highly recommended.
