Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

Annie’s Ink-Lings

Haunting, harrowing, heartbreaking. This book was an incredible depiction of the Second World War, told from the point of view of two characters in very different circumstances.  It’s just before the Nazi invasion and occupation of Paris. A young blind girl relies on her father for everything and she is his world as well. He spends all his time making her a miniature wooden model of the city so she can get around alone with her white cane. In neighboring Germany, a young boy, who lives with his sister in an orphanage, starts fooling around with crystal radios and becomes a crackerjack radio repairman enthralled by the voices coming over the air. Her blindness and his fascination with these invisible waves give us the main theme of the book.

For me, this was a very special story. I feel like I have been on a long gut-wrenching journey, and in a way I have, traveling with two young children, one in Berlin and one in Paris and follow them as they grow-up. There are poignant moments, downright sad moments, moments that made me smile and moments that made me so very angry. Werner in Berlin is a curious child, a child with the talent for putting things together, like radios, he and his sister Jutta live in an orphanage. Marie-Laure, a blind girl and her father live in Paris. Her father is the locksmith and keeper of the keys the natural history museum. It is the radio that will connect these two lives long before they actually meet.

Werner finds that he has been chosen to be put into a military school. This is the brutal story of his education at a military school; the military escapades of the boy as he works with a German unit identifying and killing resistance radio operators. We travel along with him as we learn that the many young men in the Nazi party were trained to be cold blooded killers.

Letters from his sister back in Germany become the boy’s conscience after he enters military service. How far would you go along with the prevailing threats and times, how would you react when confronted with an injustice? This young man pays heavily for his supposed weakness of character. How long can one pretend everything is fine, trying to keep eyes closed so one cannot see?

This is the story of the chaotic flight of Marie-Laurie and her father from occupied Paris to distant relatives in St. Malo in Brittany; the imprisonment of her father; the search for a missing jewel; the formation of a women’s resistance movement in St. Malo; a budding one-day romance between the French girl and the German boy.

This is the story of a miniature towns and houses built by Marie-Laure’s father so she can get around wherever she lives. It is keys, the French resistance, the United States Air Force bombing of St. Malo, of imprisonments, love, and moral questions.

What I loved most about this book was all the light that I did see. There is so much here that captivated me - from the beautiful writing to the strong, caring characters, to the loving relationships, and the way people touched each other's lives during the trying times of WW II. The descriptions are wonderful, very detailed as they are made for a blind girl, to enable her to envision the many things described.

I really did not want this story to end.

Blessings,

Annie