Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See

This was another book with quite a buzz behind it. I must admit, I attempted it at camp and could not get into the story. It takes concentration and focus to follow the time shifts in the introductory section of this novel. But, once I got to the 100th page, I was hooked and desperate to follow the story further. I stayed up well into the night reading this one.

Anthony Doerr skillfully weaves the stories of two individuals until they intertwine in a final emotion-filled moment. Marie-Laure is a French girl who loses her sight at six. Her loving father, a keeper of keys at the Museum of Natural History, builds a miniature replica of her neighborhood. Thus, she memorizes the streets and learns to navigate on her own. When the Nazis come to occupy Paris, she and her father flee to the town of Saint-Malo, taking with them a valuable stone from the museum for safekeeping.

In the meantime, Werner Pfennig is growing up at an orphanage in Germany. He is a precocious boy with an uncanny ability to repair radios. He dreams of becoming an engineer. The war provides a way of escape from his life when he takes a place at a prestigious school for Hitler Youth. Despite his desire to do something powerful with his life, he experiences brutality at the school and goes to the front lines to track enemy radio use.

But someone is after the valuable stone and Marie-Laure finds herself alone with the menacing individual. When Werner and Marie-Laure finally meet, it provides a climax to the many building events in their separate lives. I was glad I stuck with it because it was a wonderful tale. The author did a fine job of developing the characters and building suspense. He faithfully painted the war, all while presenting loads of information about various things (i.e., radios, birds, and shells). It was a hauntingly beautiful story and one I would happily read again in a few years' time.