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A review by john_pascoe
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
5.0
“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
There is a myriad of books written about World War II and Hitler’s reign. This book trumps the others by far and is easily the pick of the bunch.
All the Light We cannot see follows the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner Pfennig in the Second World War. Marie-Laure is a bright young girl who is the daughter of a French locksmith. At a very young age, she goes blind and so she memorises the layout of her hometown using a scale model built by her father and a system of counting steps. Werner is a young German boy who – along with his sister Jutta – is very interested in radios. Werner and Jutta listen to evening broadcasts on all topics but namely the educational programs of a French broadcaster. Werner is very intelligent and in the war, he triangulates distances to find people’s locales using radio signals. He is very proficient with trigonometry and electronics.
When Paris becomes unsafe for Marie-Laure and her father, they flee to Saint-Malo to live in a house with Marie-Laure’s great-uncle and grandfather who broadcasts educational programs over radio. Her great-uncle lives in a very tall, narrow house by the sea. When Etienne and Marie-Laure’s father are absent, Madame Manec allows her to venture to Madame Ruelle’s bakery to collect “an ordinary loaf”, which encloses a paper slip with a sequence of numbers. One day, on the way back home from the bakery, Marie-Laure is harassed by Werner whom she does not know. Werner eventually confesses to Marie-Laure that he used to listen to her grandfather’s programs from Germany.
The book concludes with Marie-Laure being a grandmother in 2014 and she mentions Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.
This book is written immaculately with concise chapters and scintillating vocabulary to keep the reader going. Similar to Dictionary of Lost Words, this book has well-developed characters who are sentimental and detailed with human idiosyncrasies.
There is a myriad of books written about World War II and Hitler’s reign. This book trumps the others by far and is easily the pick of the bunch.
All the Light We cannot see follows the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner Pfennig in the Second World War. Marie-Laure is a bright young girl who is the daughter of a French locksmith. At a very young age, she goes blind and so she memorises the layout of her hometown using a scale model built by her father and a system of counting steps. Werner is a young German boy who – along with his sister Jutta – is very interested in radios. Werner and Jutta listen to evening broadcasts on all topics but namely the educational programs of a French broadcaster. Werner is very intelligent and in the war, he triangulates distances to find people’s locales using radio signals. He is very proficient with trigonometry and electronics.
When Paris becomes unsafe for Marie-Laure and her father, they flee to Saint-Malo to live in a house with Marie-Laure’s great-uncle and grandfather who broadcasts educational programs over radio. Her great-uncle lives in a very tall, narrow house by the sea. When Etienne and Marie-Laure’s father are absent, Madame Manec allows her to venture to Madame Ruelle’s bakery to collect “an ordinary loaf”, which encloses a paper slip with a sequence of numbers. One day, on the way back home from the bakery, Marie-Laure is harassed by Werner whom she does not know. Werner eventually confesses to Marie-Laure that he used to listen to her grandfather’s programs from Germany.
The book concludes with Marie-Laure being a grandmother in 2014 and she mentions Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.
This book is written immaculately with concise chapters and scintillating vocabulary to keep the reader going. Similar to Dictionary of Lost Words, this book has well-developed characters who are sentimental and detailed with human idiosyncrasies.