From the Bookshelf of Challenge Corner…

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

Start date: May 1, 2022

Finish date: May 31, 2022

Discussion: Book of the Month

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Book of the Month

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What Members Thought

May 04, 2017 Maddie rated it really liked it

I'm so surprised by how quickly I read this book! I started it 3 days ago, but I didn't read one of those days, so technically only 2 days ago XD The short chapters really helped with the speed, but it was so interesting! To be honest, I don't know how the story made up 530 pages. It really didn't feel like it. Even though the time jumps were confusing at times, they also really helped develop the story. For once, I love how (view spoiler) ...more

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Jan 02, 2020 Priya rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2020, author-name-alphabet-soup, alphabet-soup-2020, go-big-2020, popsugar-reading-challenge-2020, 52-books-in-52-weeks-2020

When you turn the last page of a book and wish it had not ended, when you close the book and remember all the beautiful lines it contained and want to read them again and again, you know you have found an extraordinary book!
Mindful of the fact that award winners are often too abstract for my liking and further convinced of this truth by the very technical descriptions in the book in the first few pages, I wondered if I should carry on. But I am so glad I did.
The prose is so so lyrical, so simple When you turn the last page of a book and wish it had not ended, when you close the book and remember all the beautiful lines it contained and want to read them again and again, you know you have found an extraordinary book!
Mindful of the fact that award winners are often too abstract for my liking and further convinced of this truth by the very technical descriptions in the book in the first few pages, I wondered if I should carry on. But I am so glad I did.
The prose is so so lyrical, so simple that I marveled how the author managed to convey such poignancy and evoke such strong feelings in such an easy manner.
The story is of Marie Laure,a French girl blinded at 6 years of age, who is forced out of her home and into the town of Saint Malo during the German occupation of Paris.
With her father gone without information, she is left in the care of her grand uncle Etienne,an eccentric, sometimes lost individual who has not stepped out of his six storey house in years, the same house that Marie now lives in with him.
This is also the story of a German youth, Werner Pfennig, who, as a child in Berlin, learnt the concepts of light, electricity and other scientific terms from a radio broadcast that came from far away across the sea. This knowledge makes him adept at electronics and saves him from a dreadful life working in the mines that killed his father. It also brings him to the notice of the Hitler youth and puts him in the centre of the war, first in a politically motivated educational institution where he continually witnesses brainwashing of his fellow students as well as abject violence and cruelty, and then as part of a war unit trying to intercept transmissions.
Moving back and forth between the beginning of the war and the waning months in 1944, Marie Laure and Werner are on a course that is leading them to each other, to a mingling of their stories in one crucial moment.
Whether it is Marie Laure pondering over the fact that the city outside is starting to resemble its scale model that her father made for her to learn to navigate it, because of people being sucked out of it by the war, or Werner reflecting over the untruth that humans perpetrate by thinking they are in control of their lives when war can take everything from them in a fraction of a second whichever side they may be on, this is a commentary on the futility of armed conflict.
It portrays the desire of the ordinary people on both sides of the conflict to just live their lives without fear. It also shows the steely courage of the very same people that just naturally enables them to do what they must.
Most of all, it brings out the goodness inherent in people and the purity of their actions driven only by this virtue.
A really compelling read and I am glad I started the year with this book that will stay with me for a long time. ...more

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