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"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work"--… (more)
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"So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?"
Marie Laure LeBlanc is a blind twelve-year-old girl living in Paris with her father, the master of the locks at the Museum of Natural History, when the Germans seize control and begin their occupation of the country in 1940. They are forced to evacuate and make their way to her great uncle’s home in the sea side village of Saint-Malo. Her father carries with him the museum’s most prized and dangerous gem. He tries to make the world smaller for Marie Laure by building her a model, an exact replica of the town and by creating wooden puzzles for her to twist, turn and eventually crack open to reveal the surprise inside. (More about that in a bit.) Her natural curiosity and intelligence are fueled by her love for her father. And little by little she makes her way through Jules Vern’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
At the same time, in a German mining town three hundred miles northeast of Paris, seven-year-old orphan Werner Pfennig and his younger sister Jutta, are raised at Children’s House by the indomitable Frau Elena. In the land of ‘make-do’ she performs tiny miracles every day to keep her young charges healthy and productive. But Werner is an extremely bright and inquisitive child, and his interest in short wave radios and their transmissions allow him and Jutta to hear a Frenchman, talking about science. They are enthralled. At the same time Werner comes to the attention of authorities and that leads to his acceptance in the exclusive and brutal Hitler Youth Academy and eventually to the tracing of illegal radio transmissions for the Wehrmacht.
Doerr constructs his narrative in such a user friendly way that the pages flip effortlessly, each chapter only a page or two long, so that the 530 page book seems much, much shorter. As I read I was overcome by the beauty of the language and the intricate way Doerr allowed me to twist the puzzle that was the story’s plot, time and again, to reveal the surprise. Back and forth in time he led me until finally Marie Laure’s thread and Werner’s thread meet in August, 1944. Saint-Malo is fully occupied by the Germans but the allies are bombing the town and she can hear a German sergeant-major in the bottom floor of her great uncle’s house, hunting for the precious thing she has kept safe for several years. Gradually the tension that has been building for hundreds of pages comes to a brutal climax. But it’s the denouement that had me holding my breath because this author brilliantly continues the story through 2014.
Clear the boards and make room for a wonderful addition to the WWII literature because this is a keeper and very highly recommended.
The setting is World War II. Marie Laurie is young and blind.
Enter the Nazi's, bent on finding the exquisite diamond, hunting down and imprisoning Marie Laurie's father. The builder of tiny cities for Marie Laurie, when he is forced to leave her, he hides the rare diamond inside a tiny replicate of the city.
With the background of the ever powerful Nazi regime, we learn in alternate chapters that a small boy, Werner, who is very talented in fixing radios, is forced into a Nazi training school for boys.
It is through the two children we feel the ever encroaching, invasively dangerous Nazi's who destroy all in their path. The beauty of the writing allows the reader to feel the panic of Werner as he watches the barbarity of actions performed at the expense of the boys who reside in the camp, and then, as Werner assists the Nazi's with radio transmissions to hunt down those they deem a potential threat.
As Marie Claire longs for news of her father, through her feelings and thoughts we learn of bombings, fire and the ability of the Nazi's to threaten and terrorize through intimidation. Slowly, with the stealth of a python snake, the Nazi's find their prey and slowly, at their will, squeeze and take breath, and life.
The book is three tiered, beginning with the treat of Nazi invasion, the actual invasion which strips people of their livelihood, their sanity and thiet lives, then the final chapters we watch as Hitler can no longer win and we see the desperation as all is crumbling away. As Hitler falls, those who remain are left to rebuild their lives.
Powerful in rendering emotion, location and the desperate need to live and hope that loved ones are still alive, this is a story that will remain long after the last word is read.
Excellent!!! FIVE STARS
“You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. That's the lesson. Whoever wins, that's who decides the history.” (Ch 30)
Young Marie-Laure, who lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of
In a mining town in Germany, Werner grows up with his younger sister, both orphans. He finds and is enchanted with a crude radio he finds, and will later become an expert at building and repairing the instruments – a talent which secures him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth. Participating in special assignments to track the resistance, Werner becomes increasingly aware of the human cost of his intelligence. Eventually, he will travel to Saint-Malo on assignment, where his story and Marie-Laure’s will converge.
All the Light We Cannot See is a remarkable read: as haunting and stark in its portrayal of the human costs of war, as it is beautiful in its portrayal of intimate relationships. I highly recommend!
This is the first book I’ve read by Anthony Doerr, but after the rewarding experience I’m looking forward to reading some more.
I think that based on story alone, this could have been a 5-star read for me. Unfortunately, it wasn't. I thought the writing was studied and overly-polished, which had me focusing more on that than the story. Partially this happened because I was extremely bored by the first third of the book. I understand the reasons for wanting to go back in time and give full portraits of both Marie-Laure and Werner, but I found it mostly tedious, particularly the chapters about Werner. He just wasn't very interesting to me, and I didn't feel like he came alive as a child. Marie-Laure's blindness was handled well, showing both her capacity for self-assurance and the unique vulnerabilities she had. The exact resolution of the story kept me guessing, which was nice.
It was definitely a real page-turner once I got past the boring beginning. However, I had to knock down the rating for that because even though it got a lot better, I found the beginning *very* yawn-inducing, to the point that I considered abandoning the book entirely.
Recommended for: fans of the slow burn, sentimental types, people who like the movie Titanic.
Quote: "Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth."
The novel's two main characters are Werner, a German orphan with a talent for radio electronics, and Marie-Laure, the blind daughter of a French museum's lock master, both of whom are about 13 years old when the chronological story begins. When Werner's aptitude is uncovered, he ids taken from the orphanage and his sister, Jutta) and placed in a Hitler Youth school where his talent will be developed for use in the war. Initially thrilled to have an opportunity better than working in the mines, Werner ignores the twinges of his conscience and follows all orders--even those that ultimately destroy his best friend.
When the Germans invade Paris, Marie-Laure and her father flee to the seaside town of Saint-Malo, where her reclusive great-uncle Etienne lives. Her father may carry with him the museum's most valuable jewel, a large diamond known as the Sea of Flames--or he may be carrying one of four replicas of the diamond. For me, the Saint-Malo chapters were the most engaging in the book, mainly because of the well-developed characters and relationships.
Into the mix comes a cancer-ridden German officer charged with finding and bringing back to Berlin the treasures of the France--including the Sea of Flames.
That's all I will say about the plot, aside from the fact that, as one would expect, these characters inevitably come face-to-face with one another. I might have rated this book a bit higher if my expectations had been a little lower, and if the exposition chapters hadn't been quite so plodding. Still, All the Light We Cannot See is a worthwhile and at times very moving book.
Here is a war story told from the perspective of two young people - almost too young to be directly involved when the war begins. The blind french girl is on the one hand so dependent on others to show her the way -- at least until she memorizes the way on her own; the young German is so determined not to have to go down into the dark, claustrophic bowels of the earth as the miner his father did. He'll do anything to avoid that darkness.
Each is dealing with darkness from a different standpoint: he is trying to avoid darkness, and she is doomed to live within it. Both of them find light and life from music and from sound. She is evacuated to St Malo where she lives with an uncle who, although a recluse, is building and hiding radios. The German boy too, displays an expertise in building and operating radios, and eventually is rescued from having to go to the mines.
Doerr tells their stories, along with several auxiliary plot lines, in alternate chapters from each youth's point of view. The story is easy to follow, the tension builds quickly, and the inexorable march toward the inevitable makes this a true page turner.
In my case, I was able to "read" this book the same way Marie-Laure would have -- with my ears. The audio version, produced by Simon and Schuster, and and narrated by Zach Appelman, really enables the reader to experience life exactly as young Marie-Laure did. The descriptions of how she "saw" things, how she counted her steps, listened for creaking boards, and was able to tune into radio broadcasts was well portrayed, and perfect for the audio format. I am especially thankful that the producers did not attempt to articulate sounds Marie-Laure heard in her head. It was left to the reader's imagination to furnish that sensory experience.
I don't want to give away the ending of the story. It is realistic, beautiful, heart-rending. This is a book worth reading in any format. It's certainly the best 2014 Fiction I've read so far this yea
In its tone and tenor, this is really a YA novel. So it may be a bit surprising that it won the Pulitzer. It is written in a clear filmic style — short, one scene, chapters of about a page and a half in length. Then a quick cut to another character’s point of view. The tension remains high throughout. And you really can’t get bored. There isn’t time. But it is so self-consciously filmic — almost like it is really a “treatment” for a film, preferably directed by Spielberg — that you may find it tiring.
Of course just because this is a YA novel doesn’t mean that bad things don’t happen. They do. And some of them are truly awful. But awful in a way that would really look good in a cinema. (That’s maybe too harsh; they would also look good on TV.) I longed for more seriousness, less contrivance of plot, less blatantly heart-tugging characters. But I suppose that would simply have been a different book. And the author would be in his rights to suggest that I ought to go read that one instead. Perhaps I will. And maybe you’ll join me. Because for now, despite the accolades, this one is not recommended.
The novel also has some captivating scenes, all beautifully written. There’s Marie-Laure reading aloud from her braille edition of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, there’s the ominous agenda inside Werner’s exclusive Nazi training school, and then, if you’re like me, you’ll hold your breath as messages are passed along, hidden in freshly baked bread, and then secretly broadcast from a short-wave radio hidden in the attic of a crumbling house perched on the edge of the sea. Everything is there — all the elements of a well-written and exciting WWII adventure.
And so you settle in, cup of tea in hand and eagerly start reading…and reading…and reading — through 178 chapters. Yes, you read that right — 178 chapters!
Therein lies the first problem — 178 short chapters, many only a few pages, which jerk the reader back in forth in time, often with no clue to the year. The choppy chapters and abrupt time jumps are not only confusing, they actually prevented me from really sinking into the story. One reviewer, knowing that Mr. Doerr is a much better writer than this, surmised his editors insisted on shuffling the timeline. The format did feel gimmicky and like an afterthought. I’d go even further, I think those same editors also insisted on chopping the novel into short chapters to cater to today’s 140-character-tweet-text-snapchat-attention-span readers (That just wrote itself in the throes of my rant – like it?).
Now we come to the second problem, "All the Light We Cannot See" starts out beautifully written and compelling, but then it just seems to fall apart — rather it just never comes together. Werner’s and Marie-Laure’s paths, while coming teasingly close, never really converge. And when they do finally intertwine, they are only together for 10 pages towards the end. Then fast forward 30 years and the book ends not with a bang but with a whimper (my apologies to T. S. Eliot).
The novel won Pulitzer Prize, earned many glowing reviews and many weeks on the bestseller lists. Perhaps I missed something magical in my reading of this book. Maybe it was my mood. Whatever the reason, I was underwhelmed and sadly disappointed upon finishing this novel.
A digital review copy was provided by Scribner via NetGalley.
See all my book reviews at BookBarmydotcom.
In All the Light We Cannot See, Mr. Doerr takes his time telling Marie-Laure’s and Werner’s stories. They unfold slowly and methodically, carefully building setting, mood, and tone to weave the story around readers and fully ensnare them into its drama and tension, something he achieves with aplomb. Marie-Laure and Werner are two unfortunate souls who are tested and forged in the heat of war. Theirs is a powerful story in which the lines of right and wrong, guilt and innocence blur as readers get to know and understand them. All the Light We Cannot See is a story of perseverance, innocence lost, strengths found, and truths discovered. It leaves readers contemplative as to the intricacies and damage to mind, body, and soul war wreaks on people. More importantly, it leaves readers hopeful that even in the very worst of times, humanity’s innate goodness can and will prevail.
So why not 5 stars? It was a story worth telling, but it didn’t somehow seem different enough from other WWII stories, real or fiction. I kept being reminded of the stories within the memoir, “The Hare With the Amber Eyes”.
But don’t let that put you off. It is one of those rarities, a literary book with a good story that has a resolution and closure of the characters and the threads of the tale.
There are other books that have
The book could have been drastically improved by removing the entire plot device involving the stone. Really, WWII was bad enough without needing to throw in a jewel-hunting villain.
The one good thing this book has going for it is Wermer’s story. It is unfortunately unusual to have a book involve a German boy’s point of view, especially in the years leading up to the war. The author did a good job of showing how a boy at that time can be enfolded into the Nazi system, yet still allow us to empathize with him. I find that one of the most intriguing aspects to this part of history – how normal German people got caught up and swept along with the Nazi storm.
Doerr mix the details with a poetic sensibility that long to the last page.This book finds its way into the reader heart and soul.
I might have rated it a bit lower because the first half dragged...needlessly so, I
In the end, however, the rating balance seems right...especially because I'm left wondering whether there's much beyond some good character studies. Other than meeting Werner, Marie-Laure and the supporting cast, I don't see much that hasn't been done quite ably in other books.
While the story is worth reading, I'm not sure that there's a good answer to the question, "How do I look at World War II — or any war for that matter — differently after reading it?" While you can't fault a book for not being able to answer that question, it makes it harder to call it one of the best.
Perhaps the incredible hype surrounding this book set my expectations at an unreasonable level but I can't set Doerr's creation on the same level as Remarque's or Heller's. A darn good read but not one of my all-time favorites.
In “All the Light We Cannot See”, we read of two young lives, Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig, from 1934 through 1944 and beyond. The young Marie-Laure is the blind daughter of a single dad, Daniel, living in
Marie-Laure and Werner’s lives are presented to the reader in a parallel format in alternating ‘chapters’, always in similar timeline. The convergence point is known from the start as author presented those in brief segments, interspersed with major portions of these youths’ growth. The outcome, including the extended outcome, however, was entirely unpredictable; it felt plausible, maybe even real, not at all contrived. Doerr doesn’t attempt to wrap everyone’s lives in gift wrap with a bow on top. In life, you win some, you lose some. Some questions are never fully answered. Some pains will never fully dissipate. Though the story is wrapped around fictional characters and a fictional diamond, the story is steeped in the historical realities of fleeing the cities, rations, communication controls, the brutal ‘liberation’/attack in German cities by the Russians, and the mental and physical torturing practiced by the Nazis. The treatment of the weak was particularly cruel to read. This book made me care about its fictional characters. Its writing is excellent – very well laid out, easily understood despite parallel stories and multiple time-jumps, and the words, those extra words in incomplete sentences that trigger a complete imagery. Yeah, it’s a pretty damn good book.
A chapter titled “The Simultaneity of Instants” (Pg 466,467) wonderfully tied all the parallel lives into a single continuous paragraph.
On History:
“You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. That's the lesson. Whoever wins, that's who decides the history.”
On Entropy and the radical ethnic cleansing viewpoint:
“For Werner, doubts turn up regularly. Racial purity, political purity – Bastian speaks to a horror of any sort of corruption, and yet, Werner wonders in the dead of night, isn’t life a kind of corruption? A child is born, and the world sets in upon it. Taking things from it, stuffing things into it. Each bite of food, each particle of light entering the eye – the body can never be pure. But this is what the commandant insists upon, why the Reich measures their noses, clocks their hair color.
The entropy of a closed system never decreases.”
On Living:
“’Ready?’ He sounds like her father when he was about to say something silly. In her memory, Marie-Laure hears the two policemen: People have been arrested for less. And Madame Manec: Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
And
“He says, ‘You are very brave.’
She lowers the bucket. ‘What is your name?’
He tells her. She says, ‘When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don’t you do the same?’
He says, ‘Not in years. But today. Today maybe I did.”
On Cooking a Frog – in reference to the effect of an emerging oppressive government:
“Madame Manec snaps open the door of the icebox. Marie-Laure can hear her rummage through a drawer. A match flares; a cigarette lights. Soon enough a bowl of undercooked potatoes appears before Marie-Laure. She feels around the tabletop for a fork but finds none.
‘Do you know what happens, Etienne,’ says Madame Manec from the other side of the kitchen, ‘when you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water?’
‘You will tell us, I am sure.’
‘It jumps out. But do you know what happens when you put the frog in a pot of cool water and then slowly bring it to boil? You know what happens then?’
Marie-Laure waits. The potatoes steam.
Madame Manec says, ‘The frog cooks.’”
On Our Existence:
“We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.”
On the “Sea of Flames” diamond:
“It is cut, polished; for a breath, it passes between the hands of men.
Another hour, another day, another year. Lump of carbon no larger than a chestnut. Mantled with algae, bedecked with barnacles. Crawled over by snails. It stirs among the pebbles.”
It is 1934 and 8 year old Werner Pfennig and his sister Jutta are living in an orphanage in Germany. Their favorite pastime of building and fixing radios, and listening to broadcasts from all over Europe, becomes increasingly difficult as the Nazi party begins to censor what German citizens are allowed to listen to. Before they are completely cut off from the outside world, Werner and Jutta see and hear enough to be frightened of what their country and countrymen are becoming. As Werner gets closer to his 15th birthday and his obligatory job in the local mine, an opportunity arises that will change his life forever.
All the Light We Cannot See is the mesmerizing story of Marie-Laure and Werner and their struggle to survive in a world at war. On opposite sides but so very alike, both are thrust into situations that they cannot control and their palpable fear and frustration can be keenly felt. Doerr’s writing is nothing short of perfect. I was absolutely captivated by this novel and I now consider it one of my top 10 favorite novels of all time.
Given my feelings toward WWII lit, it's not a surprise I had such polar sentiments when I learned of Doerr's latest novel. I really love Doerr's writing, but could he pull off such a novel without descending into the conventional western tale? Largely, I think he pulls it off. That's not to say that All the Light We Cannot See doesn't pull occasionally from the bag of Allied stock footage, but overall he makes the story real and original.
All the Light We Cannot See teeters a line of being over sentimental, but for me it never crossed that line. Maybe it did in the concluding chapters, but by that point I was a believer. Overall, Doerr was wise in deciding when to terminate a scene, when to let the reader feel without manipulation. Aside from the drama that may be too much for some readers, Doerr writes perfectly. The characters are distinct and memorable; I felt for them as though they were real and they'll stick with me for some time. The writing is lush and the scenery is painted so vividly that I feel as though I have visited these cities. The many different threads all come together in a way that is satisfying and logical. The story is told in such quick, alternating chapters that the novel never slogs despite its length. The pacing is near perfect and the story is riveting without becoming overly worked. And the use of objects—I love how masterfully Doerr utilizes objects throughout the story. If any writing instructor is looking for a novel to use for an objects-based lesson, I recommend this one. Oh, and the science broadcasts for children—did anyone else wish they could hear those broadcasts in their entirety? The voice was so perfect, the text so fascinating. If they do not already exist, someone needs to write scientific books for children told in that voice. (And if they do exist, someone let me know what they are.)
All the Light We Cannot See is going to be successful and I'm really happy for its author. 2014 has been a great year for literature (see also Mira Jacob's The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing, Cynthia Bond's Ruby, Karen Gettert Shoemaker's The Meaning of Names, as well as others I have yet to read), but Doerr's latest novel will likely be the most well-received and widely acknowledged of the year's literary choices. If you're one to read award winners and those “best of year” books, this one will be one to take note of now.