All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
531 pages
Published by Scribner in May 2014
Plot:
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When Marie-Laure 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, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. (goodreads.com)
Review:
I really liked reading this book. This was because of several reasons. The story is so well developed and everything works out and makes sense. I enjoyed the bits in French and German, probably because I understand the languages anyway. The setting was great because I actually live near one of them and I have visited the other one years ago. Back to the book itself though. The characters are well developed and I just wanted to go back in time and help them in their situation. It is not too exciting and that was a little hard for me to adjust to because I am used to YA and its fastness in plot. I had to get into the book to enjoy it as much as I finally did. You definitely have to be into WWII books to enjoy this book but you can always give it a try. It was such a pleasure to read the book and I am sad it is over and of course I hope for a sequel, although this is nearly impossible.
