All the Light We Cannot See in 2025 & 2026 Reading Challenge

Nov 10, 2014 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was ok

Shelves: everyone-loved-it-except-me, lotsa-buzz, only-reading-because-of-the-buzz, historical-fiction, literary-schmiterary, fiction, era-world-war-2, beach-cover, pulitzer-winner

This keeps showing up in Best of lists for 2014, it won both Goodreads Choice and the Pulitzer, and nearly won the National Book Award, so I had to read it.

I thought I would enjoy this. I expected it to be meaningful, thoughtful, lyrical, illuminating, maybe even thought-provoking, perhaps life-changing. In the end, I was just disappointed. Perhaps I expected too much? This was an easy read, but it was not easy to stay awake while reading. Although it is set during WWII, and people are shot, and This keeps showing up in Best of lists for 2014, it won both Goodreads Choice and the Pulitzer, and nearly won the National Book Award, so I had to read it.

I thought I would enjoy this. I expected it to be meaningful, thoughtful, lyrical, illuminating, maybe even thought-provoking, perhaps life-changing. In the end, I was just disappointed. Perhaps I expected too much? This was an easy read, but it was not easy to stay awake while reading. Although it is set during WWII, and people are shot, and bombed, and imprisoned, and starved, nothing much really happens, it’s a lot of waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

This is a character-driven story, and my real problem was that I didn’t care about any of the characters. I’m not really sure why I didn’t care about them, they seem charming enough, but the only one I ever felt truly engaged with and sympathetic towards was Volkheimer. Werner and Marie-Laure were just so completely GOOD, and passive, and uninteresting - there was no complexity to them – there was no conflict there, no decisions to be made, they simply floated through tragedy, did what they were told, and did their best to stay alive and remain as unaware as possible of the horrors around them. This is a perfectly fine coping strategy for children during war time, I’m sure, but it’s not very good for creating characters that Nadine will care about.

I think the short one-or-two page chapters yanking us back and forth between POVs just didn’t work for me. We’re with Werner! We’re with Marie-Laure! We’re with Werner! We’re with Marie-Laure! We’re with that other guy! We’re back with Werner! Enough! It never let me get invested in anyone. If it is going to be slow and deep and mythical, I’d like to stay with one POV for a few pages at least. I was also really annoyed by the jumps back and forth in time; I didn’t see what this added to the story at all, it only frustrated me. In each section, I had to step out of the story and realign myself, remembering what had happened, what had not happened, and where they all were.

In the end that is what killed the book for me: I was just frustrated with the structure. It wasn’t cohesive. And – perversely – I’m angry that I don’t see what everyone else sees in this book about what you cannot see. Why didn’t I find this story to be touching and moving? Why didn’t I care about the characters? What am I NOT seeing?

Also, with all of that slow build-up leading to an inevitable conflict, I felt deflated by the ending. I read all those pages for THAT? That is not where I thought this was going. I also wasn’t sure if I liked the last parts moving into the present time, I can’t decide if that added to the story.

I was also frustrated by the distraction of the gem, it added a touch of mysticism that weakened the story because it was never developed further than a wisp of a suggestion of a mystery. I wanted either a lot more about that, or nothing at all. Major von Rumpel (or whatever his name was)hunting for the gem just annoyed me. The way this story was structured, his narrative was necessary to the narratives of Werner and Marie-Laure, but this book could have easily been restructured to remove that necessity.

I recommend two other books set during WWII with strong characters relationships which were far superior to this one: Code Name Verity and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

To make a perhaps ludicrous leap into analogy: this book is like someone who decided to make a beef dish in the crock pot, but couldn’t decide between classic beef stew or beef stroganoff or barbecue beef, and so they added a little bit of each ingredient, and ended up with not a lot of anything.

This marks three times now this year that I have read a prize-winning book and been underwhelmed. Starting to wonder if I should just avoid prize-winners!
...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Nov 02, 2014 Kate rated it it was ok

Dammit, I was NOT IMPRESSED. The story took way too long to get into, the plot line felt super contrived, and the ending was like the end of the final Hobbit movie - TWO HOURS TOO LONG.

Two stars for slow pacing and hackneyed storyline.

Like · see review

Oct 28, 2014 Jennifer Casey rated it liked it

Beautiful language. Despite that I think it would make a better film or miniseries -- Felt like I was drowning in details without a clear picture, and a film version would cut out some of the extraneous info.

Like · see review