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All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

Start date: January 1, 2015

Finish date: January 31, 2015

Discussion: Bloggers Unite Book Club

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Mar 01, 2018 Roy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary-fiction, war

Extraordinary. This book won a Pulitzer Prize* for good reason. The plot is deceptively simple, though the narrative is laid out in intricate and inventive fashion. A young German orphan boy is handy at mechanical fidgeting, including the self taught ability to fix just about any radio and pick up whatever transmissions are able to reach him. One such transmission that gets to Werner and his sister Jutta comes from France, sent by the great uncle of a blind girl that it is his destiny to one day Extraordinary. This book won a Pulitzer Prize* for good reason. The plot is deceptively simple, though the narrative is laid out in intricate and inventive fashion. A young German orphan boy is handy at mechanical fidgeting, including the self taught ability to fix just about any radio and pick up whatever transmissions are able to reach him. One such transmission that gets to Werner and his sister Jutta comes from France, sent by the great uncle of a blind girl that it is his destiny to one day meet. A great deal takes place between Werner hearing the broadcasts of Marie-Laure's great uncle and finally crossing paths with her. That great deal is World War II. Due to his talent, Werner lands in an academy that trains German boys to become German soldiers. Since the alternative is working in the mines, and since the school is a much more likely place for his abilities to be expanded and lead him to a better life than would unthinking manual labor, the school seems to be a superior path for Werner, allowing him to escape the standard trajectory for someone raised in an orphanage. Even though it means leaving his sister behind. But when your country is waging a war against the world that it is destined to lose, there is no straightforward path to success and happiness, only orders to put on a uniform, pick up a weapon, and fight for Hitler's warped vision. As for Marie-Laure, who is taught to handle herself in perpetual darkness as well as can be done by her doting father, she ends up in the home of her great uncle and his top secret radio transmitter in a small French town on the sea. Eventually she is separated from her father when he is taken prisoner, but left behind with her is an invaluable gift, a rare gem removed from the museum he worked in to keep it safe from treasure seeking Nazis. There is one in particular who is determined to find it, though not so much for its monetary worth as for its rumored magical properties. It is a gift that Marie-Laure is unaware is in her possession until finally figuring out clues sent by her father that lead to its discovery. The book's point of view jumps back and forth, largely between Werner and Marie-Laure, but several other significant characters get turns as well. Sequences are not entirely in chronological order. Although the narrative mostly marches forward, it also hops back or ahead without warning in a fashion that somehow manages not to be disorienting. The chapters are quite short, typically no more than five pages. I found this to be an appealing literary tactic that resulted in particularly easy reading. That plus Anthony Doerr's wonderful style of prose and the riveting story line. I could say more, a lot more, about this special novel. But I won't, as I don't want to let slip any spoilers and do not believe that I can adequately sum up with my humble words what Doerr constructs for readers with his majestic ones. Instead I end this review here by urging you to read All the Light We Cannot See. Like right now.

* http://lineaday.blogspot.com/2009/03/... ...more

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Mar 22, 2020 Mike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Told myself I'd write up a review for this today, but I'm too pissed about pandemic-related work issues.

This book is very good. It took my mind off things for short periods of time. ...more

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Oct 09, 2016 Kate added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

There is so much to love about this novel, especially the way you feel like you are inhabiting the lives and psyches of a blind French girl and a young German soldier. Oddly, the ending doesn't hold up; even the quality of the writing diminishes in the last few chapters. Still, it's definitely worth reading. ...more

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May 08, 2014 Greg Zimmerman rated it really liked it

(First appeared at http://www.thenewdorkreviewofbooks.co...)

I've made significant efforts over the past several years to get over my hesitation toward novels that are structured as alternating or intertwined stories. And for the most part, I've been able to overcome that tiny piece of reading neurosis — Jonathan Miles' Want Not was one of my favorite novels of last year, for example.

But then I'll read a story like Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, which is, by most measures (including (First appeared at http://www.thenewdorkreviewofbooks.co...)

I've made significant efforts over the past several years to get over my hesitation toward novels that are structured as alternating or intertwined stories. And for the most part, I've been able to overcome that tiny piece of reading neurosis — Jonathan Miles' Want Not was one of my favorite novels of last year, for example.

But then I'll read a story like Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, which is, by most measures (including its 4.27 rating on Goodreads), a very, very good novel. And I'll again remember why this type of storytelling has a tendency to be hit-or-miss for me.

Doerr's novel is the story of a 16-year-old blind French girl named Marie-Laure, who takes refuge in the coastal town of Saint-Malo with her aging great uncle during the German occupation of France. It's also the story of a teenaged German orphan named Werner, who learns how to build and fix radios at an early age, attends an elite German academy, and is sent to the front with a new device he helped invent, the purpose of which is to locate and eliminate enemy radio transmissions. And finally, and to a lesser extent, it's the story of an evil German named von Rumpel who is on the hunt all over Europe during the war for a massive, priceless diamond known as the Sea of Flames that carries with it a legend of immortality.

Amidst a main theme of the things that connect us and the things that divide us, these stories slide back and forth over one another to build up to the real-time action: All three characters wind up in Saint-Malo. In the opening scenes of the novel, the Americans are bombing the town, Werner is trapped in the basement of a hotel with another German soldier named Volkheimer, and Marie-Laure, who has the diamond in her pocket, is taking shelter in the attic of her great uncle's mansion. This all takes place in early August 1944, but the beef of the novel is how everything will eventually get to that point.

These snippets of story are told in not-more-than-two-or-three page sections. Obviously Doerr did this on purpose and for very specific reasons. One suggestion as to why might be that the shorter, almost poetic, pieces stitch his characters closer together structurally, as they eventually maneuver closer together within the plot of the story as well. As well, perhaps he wanted the whole novel to feel like short bits of memories that sort of bleed into each other.

But for me, the effect was that it pushed me further from the characters, and gave the story a choppy, jolting feel which is certainly not the tone Doerr intended, I'd guess. So really, it wasn't actually the intertwining story structure itself that kept me at arm's length, but that each strain of story is so short.

That may seem like an extraordinarily nitpicky criticism for such a generally well-received novel. So please don't get me wrong — Doerr's novel IS astonishing as a piece of fiction and masterful in its pure literary-ness. This is a writer who is as skillful at constructing sentences as any I've ever read. So I did my level best to get over my silly hang-up with the short pieces of story. I wasn't totally successful all the time, but if you're a fan of historical fiction of the uber-literary variety, this is certainly a novel for you. ...more

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Jan 30, 2015 Amy rated it really liked it

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. The novel centers around the lives of two families on opposing sides of the war. Werner and his sister Jutta are raised in a German orphanage after their father is killed in a mine explosion. Werner fears following in his father's footsteps, however, he possesses a rare gift in mathematics which capitulates him into military service.

Despite his sister's misgivings, he's proud to serve his country as one of Hitler's Youth. Meanwhile in Paris, Marie-La ...more

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