Discussion of All the Light We Cannot See--Spoilers

[Tonya]

Jane wrote: "I think there's also an almost idealized sense of the human spirit rising above the evils of war and brutality.

Yes, I totally agree, and about that...

Frederick (he seems to be my primary obsession) spends years and years with his mother drawing spirals. Then he gets Werner's message - the plate from Birds of America. Then an owl visits him on the balcony. (pg. 523)

"You saw it?" she [his mother] whispers. "Did you see it Fredde?"

He keeps his gaze turned toward the shadows. But there are only the plastic bags rustling in the branches above them and the dozens of spheres of artificial light glowing in the parking lot beyond.

"Mutti?" says Frederick. "Mutti?"

Now to my thinking this is his very first utterance since his classmates tried to kill him, but his mother responds "I'm here, Fredde." As tho she is not surprised by his speaking, which surprised me. Did you all think he had been talking all along, or not? And what is the owl's significance? In the entire book I don't recall owls ever being discussed.

[Sue]

Jane wrote: "I echo someone who pointed out how wonderful this conversation is. I just realized that what Marie Laure counts...the storm drains...is a way of thinking about what is underneath in a real physical..."

Likewise Jane, the bombing of St. Malo was horrifying. I knew that it was done to destroy the remnants of the Nazi forces but I also couldn't help thinking of all the good people who had lived there for so long, resisting their occupiers as strongly as they could.

[Portia]

Tonya wrote: "Jane wrote: "I think there's also an almost idealized sense of the human spirit rising above the evils of war and brutality.

Yes, I totally agree, and about that...

Frederick (he seems to be my p..."

The plastic bags in the trees gave me a slight chill as well. Those ubiquitous plastic bags that originally signified progress and the convenience of the disposable society (forgive the sad attempt at irony) and now are lining the bellies of infant albatross (yes!) chicks along the Pacific Rim.

[Portia]

Sue wrote: "Jane wrote: "I echo someone who pointed out how wonderful this conversation is. I just realized that what Marie Laure counts...the storm drains...is a way of thinking about what is underneath in a ..."

I thought there was a veiled reference to the destruction of Dresden in one of the chapters about Jutta's post-war life. Did anyone else notice?

[Sue]

Portia wrote: "Sue wrote: "Jane wrote: "I echo someone who pointed out how wonderful this conversation is. I just realized that what Marie Laure counts...the storm drains...is a way of thinking about what is unde..."

While it may have also referred to Dresden, St. Malo was bombed and then rebuilt after the war. I recall looking for photos of the town while I was reading. Just now I checked on Wikipedia and it reports the city was rebuilt from 1948 to 1960.

[Carol]

The allies dropped leaflets telling the residents to abandon their homes, because bombing would begin in so many hours. Some residents sheltered in place, others left for the country. I don't think the residents realized the extent of the bombing.

[Sue]

Carol wrote: "The allies dropped leaflets telling the residents to abandon their homes, because bombing would begin in so many hours. Some residents sheltered in place, others left for the country. I don't thin..."

True. And of course Marie Laure couldn't benefit from the leaflets (in this story).

[Carol]

I can't remeber if her uncle was still around when the leaflets were dropped.

[Sue]

Carol wrote: "I can't remeber if her uncle was still around when the leaflets were dropped."

I don't think he was, but that's a guess.

[Ann D]

Tonya,
An owl is often a symbol of wisdom, but I don't know what Doerr had in mind. I found that scene very, very sad because it showed how Frederick 's beautiful mind (wisdom?) had been so destroyed that he couldn't even appreciate his beloved birds any more. I understand why you keep returning to Frederick. He's the kind of gentle soul you don't forget. Such a waste, such a terrible waste.

[Kat]

Jane wrote: "I echo someone who pointed out how wonderful this conversation is. I just realized that what Marie Laure counts...the storm drains...is a way of thinking about what is underneath in a real physical..."

Great observations, Jane. I esp. like the one about the "underneath" stuff, I hadn't noticed that. Certainly the pattern/puzzle aspects of the novel are its greatest strength, I think.

[Book Concierge]

I have read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea .... in October 2014.
I rated it 4****
Looking at my review of it now, I am struck by how my description of Captain Nemo could substitute for several of the Nazis in this book.

You can see My Review HERE

---------------------

As for THIS book.... also a 4-star read for me.
I did not think the prisoner at the school was Marie-Laure's father.

Loving the discussions of the various puzzles, spirals, patterns in the book as well as in nature (as described by Marie-Laure).

[Sheila]

I missed our discussion of this book last year, but have just read it with my in person book group. I loved the discussion you had here and I posted my own opinion of the book on our What I'm reading August/September/October 2016 thread msg 130 , but thought I'd share the views of my in person group as it split the group who rated it between 2 and 4 out of 5 Their summary was
Discussion All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Rachel began the discussion reading this review which was scathing about the writing, its over use of adjectives
Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2015 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; a #1 New York Times bestseller; etc etc.
Critic: "Unfortunately, Doerr's prose style is high-pitched, operatic, relentless. Short sharp sentences, echoing the static of the radios, make the first hundred pages very tiresome to read, as does the American idiom. Somehow it is strange to listen to the thoughts of Marie-Laure and Werner and the many other characters, both German and French, give forth such Yankee utterances as "Werner … you shouldn't think big." Sidewalks, apartment houses, the use of "sure" instead of "yes' – all these cut across the historical background that Doerr has so meticulously researched. No noun sits upon the page without the decoration of at least one adjective, and sometimes, alas, with two or three. And these adjectives far too often are of the glimmering, glowing, pellucid variety. Eyes are wounded, nights are luminous and starlit, seagulls are alabaster. "Fields enwombed with hedges" is almost the last straw. And so the novel is far too long.
Nevertheless, often Doerr rises again as, entranced with the story he is telling, he lets the overwriting slip away. And his attention to detail is magnificent. Always you want to know what happens next to Marie-Laure, to her father, her great-uncle Etienne, to Werner and Jutta, and to his considerable parade of other characters. Much can be forgiven a Pied Piper like Doerr, who can pour his obsessive energies into a tale such as this."
Writing – we found it poetic and liked its style, but the use of Vernacular – Americanisms - pacifiers, sidewalk, Sure! - annoyed some people given the European setting of the story
Structure – short chapters, moving between timelines – these irritated some, whilst others liked them and found the short chapters gave pace as the two main characters story came together.
Doerr took 10 years to write this book and created the short chapter intentionally according to his interview “The little segments present a way for me to be obsessive—if I only have a few hours, I can read through one, revise and try to improve it. I loved how little pocket-chapters offer me a chance to make small, manageable miniatures that I can refine and purify, then string together into strands to tell a story.”
We discussed whether there was too much detail, whether details were unnecessarily repeated eg in the cellar scenes where some thought that repetition aided slowing down time which is what it would have seemed like in that situation
Ending – same thought it could have finished after Chapter 11, that the final chapters were disappointing, almost written differently, rushed, not the same quality of writing . We discussed whether all loose ends always need to be tied up in a novel, or not.
Characters – Chris wasn’t interested in the characters, they did not engage him, and didn’t finish the book, whilst others did like the characters, eg the simple bravery of Frederick v Werner and thought it a page turner, seeing the world through Marie Laure’s touch, sense of smell, hearing, but would a child lover of her father’s puzzles not have solved his riddle in the letter much earlier?
The Model – the description detail was like in The Miniaturist, some people thought it unlikely that a model of the town could be constructed small enough and yet able to hold a diamond the “size of a pigeon’s egg” within a house.

[Ann D]

Sheila,
I enjoyed your account of your book club's reaction to ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE. I loved this book and surprisingly (because this is not always the case!) almost everyone in my in person book club liked it. One good friend did fine it too painful to continue reading.

The "adjectives" did not bother me at all; in fact I liked the prose style very much. As an American reader, I did not even notice the Americanisms.:-)

I feel that criticism on that account is somewhat misguided. The main characters are French and German after all. Presumably they used colloquial expressions in their own languages which could have been rendered either in British or American vernacular.

Just this week, my book club discussed another favorite of mine: AMERICANAH. I had heavily promoted this book and just finished rereading it. One member was as enthusiastic about the book as I was. Some disliked the main character. One felt uncomfortable with the race discussions, although she felt guilty for feeling that way. At the end, someone said she was glad she had read the book because she learned something from it, but that she wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. That seemed to be the majority consensus. Oh well, at least we did have an interesting discussion on race in America!

Afterwards, I looked back on the CR discussion of this book and felt better - although this book certainly did not meet with unanimous approval there either.

[Sheila]

Ann, I liked it very much. I loved its poetic style and was less bothered by the "Americanisms" in the text and more by some of the mispronunciations in the audio (can't recall them now) and the fact that they change Hubert in the text to Harold on the audio!
I probably would not have picked the book to read from its description - seem to have been reading too many war books - except I had read the runner up to it winning the Pulitzer The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami which I absolutely loved but very glad I did because I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[James]

Like Sheila, I somehow missed this discussion. I had read the book in April for our state library's book discussion, which added something to it because I'm almost the only sighted person in the group. This is what I wrote at the time in my review:

I read this because it was the selection for the Utah State Library/Utah Library for the Blind book discussion this month. It was a very well written and absorbing novel set during the Second World War in Europe; the main characters are a blind French girl, her father and uncle, and a young German soldier. I enjoyed reading it. It was not exactly what I expected; despite winning the Pulitzer Prize (undoubtedly for the excellent style of writing) it was definitely a genre war story rather than a serious historical novel. The plot was exciting if not always entirely credible, and the characters were interesting and sympathetic. The author is American, and although there are no American characters, the novel reflects the American view of the war -- the tragedy of the war for both soldiers and civilians, the evil Nazi brutality (as a psychological aberration), a few good Germans who secretly oppose Hitler but cooperate out of fear, brave French men and women who join the Resistance individually out of patriotism, a few weak or greedy individuals who collaborate out of fear or opportunism: in short a war between nations, with all the internal politics left out. No mention that the Resistance was largely based on left wing workers organizations; no mention that the collaborators were largely rightists; no mention of the official collaboration of the French authorities. The claim that the Russian Army carried out mass rapes in Berlin at the end of the war (which is based entirely on underground Nazi newspapers). I couldn't imagine a European author writing about the Resistance in this basically nonpolitical way. As a genre war thriller, it was probably above average, although I don't read that genre so I don't have much to compare it with; I have higher standards for historical fiction.

[Sheila]

Oh, does the Pulitzer only consider historical novels then?

[Ann D]

Thanks for the review, James. How did the blind people in the group react to the French girl? Did they find her skills and behavior credible for a sightless person?

At the end of the book, don't we find that Marie-Laure has become an expert on shells? I wondered how plausible that would be for someone who couldn't see, but I know little about the nature of blindness.

[James]

Sheila wrote: "Oh, does the Pulitzer only consider historical novels then?"

No, but it doesn't generally consider genre novels like war stories. It's more oriented to literary fiction, as far as I can tell.

[James]

Ann wrote: "Thanks for the review, James. How did the blind people in the group react to the French girl? Did they find her skills and behavior credible for a sightless person?

At the end of the book, don't ..."

They didn't say it wasn't credible, although they thought it was amazing. They all liked the book. Interestingly, one of the major world experts on shells is in fact a blind man. http://www.blind.net/resources/employ...