All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.

I wondered what it would be like, particularly for a sightless person, to lose the sounds of the church bells marking your hours. Having Marie lose track of time seemed an efficient way to dramatize her extreme vulnerability and isolation at this moment. Time, of course, is a construct of human culture—hours and minutes are a totally arbitrary way to divide up a day. But the divisions of time provide so much comfort and routine: when it’s six o’clock for me in Idaho, and eight o’clock for you in Toronto, we are connected by a shared cultural agreement. When those comforts go away, what happens to us?