All the Light We Cannot See

Hardcover

English language

Published May 5, 2014 by Scribner.

ISBN:
978-1-4767-4658-6
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OCLC Number:
852226410

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5 stars (2 reviews)

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan …

30 editions

An honor and great pleasure to have read this book

No rating

Strangely enough most reviews I've read said that this book was about WWII. True the events in the book do occur during that war but to me WWII was more like a prop than the subject of the work. Basically we see the the drama through the eyes of two children, a French blind girl (in her case of course it's more "we feel") and a German boy. But in fact it's much more about their respective internal worlds than about the war as such and if only to read how a young 15 years old blind girl first discovers the ocean, it's gigantic might and incredible mildness for the first time by sounds, smells and feelings on her skin is worth the effort (or in my case pleasure).

Review of 'All the Light We Cannot See' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

As intricate and well-crafted as Helprin's Soldier of the Great War, or Sunlight and Shaddow, only more enthralling and accessible. Loved the skipping around in time and place, fullfilling the thesis that mind and spirit aren't restricted to the linear progression of time and can fly through the air like birds or radio waves.