All the Light We Cannot See (original 2014; edition 2014)

Some very nice sentences. ( )

Marie-Laure, blind from a young age, lives with her father in Paris. He works at the Museum of Natural History, specializing in locks and and the possessing the ability to create puzzle boxes for Marie-Laure, as well as small models of their house & city for her to discover and explore with her hands without the benefit of vision. When Germany occupies France during WWII, Marie-Laure and her father flee to a relative's house outside Paris, taking with them what may be one of the most valuable & powerful gemstones of the world. Meanwhile, in Germany, young Werner has grown up in an orphanage with his sister. He displays an unnatural talent for being able to build and repair radios, and soon finds himself being groomed as a prime candidate and member of the Hitler Youth. Eventually, Marie-Laure and Werner cross paths, but not necessarily in the way you would expect.

This is a beautiful and yet another take on events during World War II. I would have enjoyed more dialogue to carry this story along, but as other reviewers have noted, the beautiful writing is usually enough to keep the reader engaged. The story alternates back and forth between the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, and I wanted to keep reading to find out how their lives would intersect. I am anxious to watch the upcoming TV miniseries now, to see if the adaptation does the book justice. ( )

Lovely book, set around St Malo in wartime. Beautifully written and very well narrated. Story of love and human connection - pulls on the heart strings, and lingers. ( )

When I was about 60 pages away from finishing this book, an acquaintence who had read it told me that I would hate the way it ended. Actually, at abut that same point, I had been wondering about how it might end, hoping it would end one way and fearing it would end another.
When it ended, I was very pleased with the decison the author, Anthony Doerr, had madeabout its ending. It felt authentic and honest and entirely consistent with the rest of the book.
As I reflect o the ending and the book as a whole, I am becoming more impressed with it than I was even when I posted my 5 star rating. I belive that this is not just another good book, a good pices of historical fiction. It is more than that.
The characters are well drawn and believable and the situations and events of the book are realistic. But you would expect that in any good piece of fiction. This book offers characters and incidents wthat are beyond what they appear to be on the surface. The characters are archetypes of the people who would have suffered through the war. Each carefull crafted character represents the thousands, perhaps millions, who would have been in the circumstances the characters are in. Civilians who just want to go on with their lives, soldiers who didn't want to be soldiers and their opposite, the loyalists who believed in their government and in what it stood for. Each and every character in this book, whether a major character or a lesser one, stands for similar real people as they would be in the throes of a brutal war.
The situations and events of the story siimilarly represent the kinds and types of events a lengthy, brutal and futile war would include.
Even the central unifiying item, the rare diamond, represents something larger than itself. It represents the loss of a nation when it is despoiled by a war, a war it did not want and rralized could only end in returning to a peace unlike the one it had before the war.
Mt friend was wrong about the ending of this book. Authenticity triumphs over sentimentality and the novel, and its readers, are the richer for it. ( )

“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?”

All the Light we cannot see is an Anthony Doer novel set in France during WW2, a main theme is a childhood being interrupted by war. The two main characters were Werner and Marie. The chapters were short but I felt that Werner was suffering more, throughout the book, there is no doubt that Marie's heart is pure, she's had a nice life apart from being blind. Werner on the other hand, has not.
The writing is somewhat lyrical and occasionally some of the words are abrupt and sharp and don't suit, pulling you out of the story on occassion. It may seem like a shallow book but look beneath the calm waters.
Occasionally, it felt like the story dragged but overall, an alright book.

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