Have you ever read a book that made your heart ache with the desire to write with just a fraction of that talent? The words are music. Art.
And that is precisely what All the Light We Cannot See is: a masterpiece of fiction.
A heart-wrenching story that makes it feel like a rebellion to dare to hope in bleak times, to seek out the light in the darkness, to come through it all with a defiant resilience.
Threads of individual characters are intricately woven together: an orphaned German boy, coming of age during WWII; a young, blind French girl and her father—the master locksmith for the Museum of Natural History; and a German officer, on the hunt for the world’s greatest artifacts.
As the story unravels, these seemingly unrelated characters are thrust together in Saint-Malo—a city under siege with the most unlikely caretaker guarding a treasure the world hasn’t laid eyes on in two centuries.
There is an impossible beauty in the writing itself, though the author doesn’t shy away from presenting the complexities of war, all revolving around a central theme: the cost of doing what’s right.
The metaphors are poignant. The imagery is immersive. And I cannot, in my own words, do this book justice.
In Saint-Malo:
The underside of the sky goes black with flecks. Marie-Laure’s great-uncle, locked with several hundred others inside the gates of Fort National, a quarter mile offshore, squints up and thinks, Locusts, and an Old Testament proverb comes back to him from some cobwebbed hour of parish school: The locusts have no king, yet all of them go out in ranks.
A demonic horde.
— Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, “Bombs Away”
In Berlin:
The bistro is overcrowded; everyone’s mouths move too quickly; the woman talking to Frederick’s mother is wearing a nauseating quantity of perfume; and in the watery light it seems suddenly as if the scarf trailing from the dancing girl’s neck is a noose.
—Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, “January Recess”
The imagery reinforces the mood, sets the scene, and foreshadows:
The Pyrenees gleam. A pitted moon stands on their crests as if impaled.
—Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, “Loudnevielle”
Storms rinse the sky, the beaches, the streets, and a red sun dips into the sea, setting all the west-facing granite in Saint Malo on fire, and three limousines with wrapped mufflers glide down the rue de la Crosse like wraiths, and a dozen or so German officers, accompanied by men carrying stage lights and movie cameras, climb the steps to the Bastion de la Hollande and stroll the ramparts in the cold.
—Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, “Fall”
Setting expectations:
While this book is well-reviewed and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, it’s not for everyone. It’s interesting, but not necessarily a page turner for the first half, and some reviewers on Goodreads didn’t like how long the book was or the nonlinear narrative.
Read if you like multiple perspectives bouncing around in time (mainly between 1934 and 1944). Each chapter is relatively short and clearly lays out who it is and when it takes place.
Don’t read if you want something light with a neatly wrapped-up ending with a happily ever after. This book washed me in from the storm-tossed surf only to beat me against jagged rocks.
Blurb:
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
Thanks for reading—stay inspired!
Janine Eaby is the author of Beyond the Water’s Edge—a fantasy book series influenced by her faith, love of nature, and desire for adventure. Ideal for fans of portal fantasies to other worlds like in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Great read, bad movie
I love this book! Thanks for the major review, as it reminds me why I love it.