All the Light We Cannot See

allthelightwecannotsee

 

All the Light We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr

I normally would not have read this book. It did win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but I am not a fan of books about war so it would not have been something I would have chosen for myself. The premise was not completely about soldiers fighting in a war, but two children on different sides of WWII caught up with what is going on around them. My book club picked this book and I thought I would give it a try. I am really glad I did.

Marie-Laure lives in Paris with her father. She has gone blind at age six so her father built her a miniature of their neighborhood so she can know by touch how to navigate from their house to his work at the museum where she accompanies him every day. When France becomes occupied by Nazis, Marie-Laure and her father flee to the seaside walled city of Saint-Malo to stay with her great-uncle. Werner is an orphan in Germany who is really good with electronics and especially radios. Even though he is on the small side, he is handpicked to joined the Hitler Youth because of his electronic skills. He does not want to work in the coal mine that killed his father so he joins, even though he does not fully understand what his skills will be used for in the war. The book follows them throughout the years as the war moves Marie-Laure and her father out of Paris and then as Marie-Laure has to adjust living with her hermit great uncle when her father goes missing one day because the Nazis think he has knowledge of a rare gem. Werner goes through a boot camp of sorts before he is sent out into the fields and realizes exactly what he has been training for when his radio knowledge helps discovers the resistance fighters. Their storylines eventually converge towards the end of the book, but only briefly. I would have liked them to be together longer than they were, but I did not mind the way the book ended.

There was not a lot of plot moving the story along. Little things happened and time passed. That is not what kept me going back to the book to finish it. It was the way it was written. I loved the way it was written. When Marie-Laure and her father were fleeing a burning Paris, the visuals were stunning: “The fires pool and strut; they flow up the sides of the ramparts like tides; they splash into alleys, over rooftops, through a carpark. Smoke chases dust; ash chases smoke. A newsstand floats, burning.” At another point, Werner has his doubts about what he is doing in the war. “Werner is succeeding. He is being loyal. He is being what everybody agrees is good. And yet every time he wakes and buttons his tunic, he feels he is betraying something.” That thought comes soon after another boy that did not make it through the Hitler Youth training tells him, “‘Your problem, Werner,’ says Frederick, ‘is that  you still believe you own your life.'”

I read this book pretty quickly because I enjoyed the writing so much. It told the horrors of war, but in subtle ways. I really felt for everyone in the story and parts of it made me sad, but any book involving war is going to do that. Most of the book seemed to be building to this grand ending, especially when they finally find each other, but that is not the end. It is not some grand ending, but more of a trickle of one. While I know this annoyed some people, I could buy it since that is the way life is at times. The war ends, some people make it through it, and those that do go on living. As Marie-Laure 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?”

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