From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

Start date: September 1, 2018

Finish date: September 30, 2018

Discussion: 2018 RT Tournament of Books

Why we're reading this: Contender for the 2018 Tournament of Books, round H
[close] Contender for the 2018 Tournament of Books, round H

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What Members Thought

Sep 19, 2018 Petra rated it did not like it

How did this book get so many great reviews? Where's the tension, the story, the anticipation? This is bland, oh so bland.
The war happens around the characters, at a bubble's length. Despite being in the middle of it all, they don't get touched by the war.
This is 3 stories combined (loosely) into one: a blind girl living through a war siege, a young German boy caught up in the war (but not evil....this is a "nice" story) and a diamond with a legend attached to it. The combination failed.

So ma ...more

36 likes · Like · see review

Jun 16, 2014 Sarah rated it it was ok

Shelves: 500-plus-pages, war, wwii, pulitzer, read-in-2015

The story was good, if fanciful, and the characters had great potential. I also thought the jumps in time worked well. But overall I found this a let-down, largely because the writer’s style inclined to the twee side. The characters’ potential turned to easy melodrama. There was a lot of flourish, bordering occasionally on over-the-top. I was surprised from page 1 to find the book had such short chapters. Short chapters are great in books that are dense, or enigmatic, or patchworky. This just se The story was good, if fanciful, and the characters had great potential. I also thought the jumps in time worked well. But overall I found this a let-down, largely because the writer’s style inclined to the twee side. The characters’ potential turned to easy melodrama. There was a lot of flourish, bordering occasionally on over-the-top. I was surprised from page 1 to find the book had such short chapters. Short chapters are great in books that are dense, or enigmatic, or patchworky. This just seemed to pander to the short attention span.

I resisted my own opinion for while, knowing how many grown-ups really loved this book. How, when it was pressed into my hands, I felt like I was being given the key to the universe! Alas, the key led to ...
“A small dripping cavern where a boy could shout and dream.” (p. 422)

When I finally gave in and decided to start mining the cringe-worthy sentences, where better to start digging than in Zollverein, the German mining town where our hero was born, where there was “string and spit and wire and a voice on the radio offering a loom on which to spin his dreams.”? (p. 389)

When Werner hears voices directing artillery, it’s “The same sort of voice God uses, when He calls souls to Him.” (p. 388)

Sometimes he lays it on even thicker: “Neumann Two is already upright beside him, palms cupped against each other, as though attempting to hold a sphere of darkness in the bowl of his hands.” (p. 318) Oy.

Or: “As if, at every meal, the cadets fill their tin cups not with the cold mineralized water of Schulpforta but with a spirit that leaves them glazed and dazzled, as if they ward off a vast and inevitable tidal wave of anguish by staying drunk forever on rigor and exercise and gleaming boot leather.” (p. 263)

There were other stylistic tics that peeved me, such as: “The old frau collects the plates.” (p. 317) Just why? I understand ‘frau’ as a title, but not substituting it for ‘woman’ or ‘lady’ to lend a supposed authenticity, if that was the aim.

Then there’s the ‘flying couch’ segment, in which great-uncle Etienne is roused from his decades-long depressive slumber by Marie-Laure. I admit this could happen, and I don’t begrudge the vehicle, but its presentation borders on sappy. When Marie-Laure agrees to become the courier for secret messages hidden in loaves of bread, Etienne tells her “Then go, Marie-Laure. Go like the wind.” I guess I should be grateful there’s no exclamation mark, though strictly speaking such an imperative seems to demand one. Anyway...

That’s what turned me off. The slight sappiness keeps things from being meaningful. As a reader, I’m kept at arm’s length to prevent this fairy tale from getting a bit real. And the book itself chides me for possibly insulting someone by being turned off:

"So, asked the children, how do you know it’s really there?
"You have to believe the story." (p. 427)

I failed. But it isn’t boring. It's an imaginative page-turner. ...more

13 likes · Like · see review

Sep 20, 2018 El rated it really liked it

Shelves: library-borrow, 21st-centurylit, big-effing-books

Last summer, the woman I worked for took a copy of this book with her to the cabin in Canada she and her partner go to each summer. When she came back she told me I should read it, and because I rarely turn down those sorts of recommendations from people I look up to, I finally got around to reading it now. After she no longer works at the university so we can't even talk about it.

While I was reading it, another faculty member came to my office to ask me a question, saw the book sitting on the c Last summer, the woman I worked for took a copy of this book with her to the cabin in Canada she and her partner go to each summer. When she came back she told me I should read it, and because I rarely turn down those sorts of recommendations from people I look up to, I finally got around to reading it now. After she no longer works at the university so we can't even talk about it.

While I was reading it, another faculty member came to my office to ask me a question, saw the book sitting on the corner of my desk, stopped the work-related discussion, and asked me if I was loving this book as much as she loved it when she read it.

Another time, while sitting in the waiting room in my doctor's office, a woman walked past, saw the book on my lap, and asked if I was loving this book as much as she loved it. (I had just fallen on my way into the building and was literally sitting there with my hand up in the air because I scraped the skin off my thumb knuckle and was bleeding rather profusely, but yeah, that's a good time to talk about books!)

All of this to say that I did worry briefly that this might be one of those books that only women like. Hey, it happens, even if I don't like to make gendered remarks of that nature. It happens. I worried it was some love story that would make my stomach hurt. But it isn't and it didn't, so rest your pretty little heads about that.

A bit ago I wrote a review for A.S. Byatt's Possession wherein I went on a bit about how much I wanted to like the big book, and yet how it all dragged for me, in part because I didn't feel there was much driving it forward. (Actually, I didn't say that last part in my review, because I just thought of it now, but better late than never.) This book is similar in that there are different storylines and there's actually not a lot moving it forward it either, but it actually works.

In part, maybe, because the chapters are ridiculously short. Like 1-2 pages. The chapters alternated between Werner, an orphan in Germany, and Marie-Laure, a Parisian girl who loses her eyesight by age six. Their stories run parallel, back and forth, showing us their trials and tribulations. I've heard complaints that they weren't rich enough characters, but for me they were more than alive. I truly enjoyed reading both of their stories.

The only complaint was this whole other bit about a jewel that felt rather out of place and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. And it was impossible for me not to picture Indiana Jones through those scenes, but that may have been because I was watching those movies on TV every time they came on (which was quite frequently while I was reading this book). Again, I love Indiana Jones/National Treasure/The Librarian kinds of stories. But it didn't work very well against this setting of two characters coming of age during the Second World War.

Yes, there was some eye-rolling at some of the turns of phrases. It was a bit purple-prosey for my tastes. But, again, somehow it managed to work for me.

A corner of the night sky, beyond a wall of trees, blooms red. In the lurid, flickering light, he sees that the airplane was not alone, that the sky teems with them, a dozen swooping back and forth, racing in all directions, and in a moment of disorientation, he feels that he's looking not up but down, as though a spotlight has been shined into a wedge of bloodshot water, and the sky has become the sea, and the airplanes are hungry fish, harrying their prey in the dark.
(p91)

Yeah, okay, "a wedge of bloodshot water" doesn't work very well for me either. ...more

12 likes · Like · see review

Jul 24, 2014 Sera rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kindle, favorites, literary-fiction, own, 1st

Wow, what an outstanding book. The writing and storytelling reminded me of Les Misérables, except that Doerr is extremely concise in his writing, while Hugo tends to be more verbose. Both, however, have been able to evoke a tremendous amount of emotion in me through their use of the written word.

Doerr's novel tracks the young lives of a blind girl who lives in France with her father and an orphaned German boy. The book jumps between pre-WWII and WWII itself before wrapping up in present day. The ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Sep 13, 2018 Lise Petrauskas rated it really liked it

Shelves: 21st-century-fiction

I was captivated by these characters and this story. Aspects of it felt far fetched and I worried about the plot device of the jewel taking over and making the story feel contrived. It did feel a bit contrived, but I ultimately forgave that because of the subtlety of the denouement that was still a mystery.

4 likes · Like · see review

Aug 21, 2014 Irene rated it really liked it

This is on the edge between four and five stars. The writing is beautiful. The characterizations are superb. The story line is deceptively simple; it will stay with me long after the final page. I suspect that the next few books I open will suffer by comparison.

3 likes · Like · see review

Jun 03, 2019 Janice (JG) rated it really liked it

I do not normally care for WWII novels (I have more tolerance for WWI novels, but that was a very different time), and I don't much like the current method of switching POVS throughout a story. This is a WWII novel that switches POVS constantly within very short chapters (primarily between the two main characters who are children)... but I've come to the conclusion that this method is necessary for the story to work.

It is a kind of thriller, it is historical fiction that provides a new (to me) ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Feb 23, 2014 Jen rated it liked it

Shelves: 2014-reads, audio, 2014-releases, ww2

Beautiful and totally engrossing.

2 likes · Like · see review

Aug 05, 2014 Heather(Gibby) rated it really liked it

This is a wonderful well written book, but it was not as fantastic as I was expecting, which may be just because of all the hype I had heard before reading the book had built my expectations too high. It may also be that I am just overdosed on World War II books right now.

It was uniquely told form the perspective of two young teenagers from two different sides of the war, and I really appreciated this point of view.

1 like · Like · see review