All the Light We Cannot See in Around the World

Jan 03, 2015 Suzanne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kindle, historical-fiction, world-war-ii, book-club-2016

Set during World War II in Brittany, Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer Prize winner is a gem of a novel, relating the tale of two young protagonists who fight for survival.

Marie-Laure is a twelve year old blind girl who leaves Paris with her father to the coastal town of St. Malo. Surrounded by a caring community and an anxiety ridden great-uncle, the girl is the recipient of many kindnesses (ie, light). Her father lovingly crafts a model of the town to help her "see," and she also received a large brail ...more

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Dec 26, 2014 Renae rated it liked it

Shelves: genre-historical, setting-france, setting-germany, read-in-2015

So this is the big one. Pulitzer prize for fiction, national book award finalist, etc. But, truth be told: All the Light We Cannot See is good, but it’s not excellent. Anthony Doerr’s concept is good, but the book is unwieldy, with a structure that does nothing more than drag things out, and a mystical side-plot that’s entirely unnecessary. Bare bones, this is a good book. But I was relieved when I finished it, and I don’t think I’m likely to think long or hard about anything that happened in th So this is the big one. Pulitzer prize for fiction, national book award finalist, etc. But, truth be told: All the Light We Cannot See is good, but it’s not excellent. Anthony Doerr’s concept is good, but the book is unwieldy, with a structure that does nothing more than drag things out, and a mystical side-plot that’s entirely unnecessary. Bare bones, this is a good book. But I was relieved when I finished it, and I don’t think I’m likely to think long or hard about anything that happened in these pages.

The novel’s structure, as I said, is not conducive to pleasant reading. Doerr inserts flash-forward interludes that hint at a crisis occurring in the characters’ lives in 1944, but this technique doesn’t add tension or anticipation; rather, it tells you what’s going to happen eventually, so the rest of the book is just the reader waiting until the “present” catches up with that future crisis. Not a smart move, in my opinion. I think the author has already built enough tension in the narrative by having the chapters alternate characters’ perspectives, usually ending on a cliffhanger. That’s a good idea, but spoiling the ending but then forcing the reader to wade through 500 pages to reach that ending is just silly.

Then there’s the entire diamond plotline, which was just not to my taste, and seemed hardly important, considering how magical/mythical it was in tone. Basically, one of the protagonists, Marie-Laure, has a supposedly cursed diamond. It keeps her safe, but brings calamity on everyone else in her life. All the Light We Cannot See plays with this cursed diamond concept ad nauseum, but it seems like pointless fluff. In the end, what purpose did this diamond serve? Nothing. Take it out, and the story is far more streamlined and much more coherent. The deranged Nazi treasure hunter searching for said diamond so as to cure his cancer can be completely cut out—a seriously much-needed revision.

If these two glaring issues could be rectified, I believe All the Light We Cannot See would be much improved. The story at the heart of the matter: two young adults surviving through a war, each in their own ways, is good. I like that story. But Doerr putzes around too much; this book does not need to be any longer than 300 pages—400 at the very most. His writing is effective and clear, though prone to flights of philosophic fancy. It didn’t, technically speaking, really take me that long to read this book, but it felt like such a dragging, meandering slog of a text, and that’s what matters. I love long books, but in this case, I didn’t understand what in the story merited the large page count.

All the Light We Cannot See is good. From a technical standpoint, it needs a lot of work and some slimming down. But the bones of the plot are good, and I didn’t necessarily have fun reading the book, but it wasn’t a wholly onerous task. Is this worth the acclaim it’s gotten? Absolutely not. Any number of 2014 publications are far more deserving. But neither is this terrible. It was a decent read at the very least. ...more

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Dec 15, 2014 Carolyn rated it it was amazing

I thought this book was amazing. Kind of slow at the beginning, but I found myself really becoming invested in the characters and by the end, I couldn't put it down. ...more

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Aug 27, 2014 Beth rated it really liked it

Shelves: pulitzer

Review to follow

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Jul 09, 2014 Kate Z rated it it was amazing

Really loved this book and I think it's destined to become a "classic", perhaps not in the way of The Help or The Red Tent but this is one of those novels that will linger in the hearts and minds of readers and be passed quietly from person to person.

The book is long and that will deter some people and although the book is structurally easy to read with short chapters which alternate between two main characters (more on that a little later) I found that I could not consume the book in big chunk Really loved this book and I think it's destined to become a "classic", perhaps not in the way of The Help or The Red Tent but this is one of those novels that will linger in the hearts and minds of readers and be passed quietly from person to person.

The book is long and that will deter some people and although the book is structurally easy to read with short chapters which alternate between two main characters (more on that a little later) I found that I could not consume the book in big chunks and it took me longer than other novels of a similar length to get through. I'm writing this having finished the book about a week ago so I've had some time to think about why that might be and I've come to the conclusion that the dramatic irony of the child protagonists set amidst WW2 Germany and France was too intense for me to read all at once and I could only take it in smaller doses (though I was not conscious of that reasoning at the time).

Normally I'm weary of the alternating narrator structure and I find it an over-used device but I didn't feel that way with this book. There is a third character, a German sergeant major gemologist, who comes into the narrative at irregular intervals as well. The main protagonists are Werner, a young German orphan with innate engineering skills like putting together radios, who is sent to the National Political Institute of Education at Schulpforta to become a radio engineer for the German wehrmacht and Marie-Laure, the blind daughter of a locksmith at the Paris Museum of Natural History who, with her father, flees the Nazi invasion of Paris for the walled city of Saint Malo with a precious diamond from the museum's collection. The sergeant major gemologist is hunting that diamond for the Nazi's collection.

This is a novel of opposites, of foils and paradoxes that carefully interweave and intertwine. It's also a classic coming of age story for both main protagonists. The reader watches Werner, the orphan, driven by a deep love of science who tinkers with radios, be conscripted by the Nazis, you watch his training, you know what's happening, what he's being trained for and trained to do, but he's blameless, a young boy powerless and completely at the mercy of the German army. Therein lies some of the tension of the book; we know the evil of the Nazi regime but Werner is just an innocent boy with a curiosity and aptitude for radios.

There are many wonderful sub-texts woven through the novel like the anti-The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History story of the Germans scouring the continent for the greatest works of art and culture. Here we have the singular pursuit of a fabled diamond (in this case not stolen from individuals but protected and hidden by the Paris Museum of Natural History. This is a novel about the absolutely beauty of the world amidst the ugly devastation of war. Werner's classmate and friend, Frederick, finds both beauty and solace in birds. Blind Marie-Laure finds beauty in the world of books and risks much for a few minutes spent at the ocean among the snails and shells which she collects and sorts despite the fact that she cannot see them. There are the seminal moments of youth which change the course of our lives: Werner and Jutta, his sister, listening to the radio broadcasts, Marie-Laure and 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea and other Classic Novels. That this beauty exists in a world where Nazis and death camps, the rise of German Fascism alongside French Resistance are paradoxes that the reader must grapple with.

It's a rare novel that makes me cry. I wept (almost out loud) (view spoiler) ...more

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