I am going to start off by saying that I adore this book. It is well written, thoughtful, well researched and gripping.
There are two intertwining lives in this novel that endure World War Two in distinctive ways. The heroine of Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See is Marie-Laure, a French girl whose loving father, a talented locksmith, goes to extraordinary lengths to help her compensate for her loss of sight.
Professionally, Marie-Laure’s father oversees all locks at the Museum of Natural history in Paris. Additionally, after his daughter is blinded by cataracts in 1934 at the age of 6 he fabricates tiny, intricate models of the places she must go, so that she can first learn by feel and then by memory.
When the book opens in August 1944 Marie-Laure is living in Saint-Malo, a Breton city on the coast of France that is under siege by the Germans. It is here that the most dramatic parts of the narrative come to pass. Five streets away from the house to which Marie-Laure and her father have fled a young German soldier named Werner is trapped in the ruins of a grand hotel.
Marie-Laure grows up beloved and fortunate; Werner’s life is very different. He is sent to an orphanage at a young age after his father is killed in a mining accident. It is only Werner’s intellect and talent with radios that saves him from a life in the same ill fated mines. In 1939, word of Werner’s prodigious talent reaches those in power who find him so impressive that he is easily a candidate for an elite Nazi school, the curriculum of which focuses on Nazi teachings and strict military discipline.
Werner’s experience at the school is one of the many trials that Doerr puts his characters through in “All the Light We Cannot See”. The light in its title is, among other things, a topic that Werner hears discussed on a late-1930’s radio show hosted by Marie-Laure’s grandfather about the brain’s power to create light in darkness.
It is a premise that echoes ever more strongly as the book progresses. Self preservation is another theme running through this book.
Marie-Laure is fascinated by snails, and takes the nickname the Whelk when Saint-Malo begins its small but creative efforts at Resistance. The book’s characters also fall under the spell of a huge blue diamond that is thought to be bad luck and is the subject of a frantic search on Hitler’s behalf.
This book is written in an absorbing format that travels through time navigating twists and turns with ease. The writing and imagery are remarkable with the underlying light in the title living on until the last page. A strong 4.5/5.
