All the light we cannot see - Anthony Doerr
Title: All the light we cannot see
Author: Anthony Doerr
Publication: May 6th, 2014
Publisher: Scribner
Summary:
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller 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 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 she 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. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).
My Review:
Lou's mind stars: ✭✭✭✭✭
I would be a crier, I would cry right now. This book was beautiful in a strange way that I cannot explain. The life of the characters are interlacing with each other and slowly you see the links unfolded before your eyes. Along the beautiful descriptions the author uses, the prose is something I have rarely seen in books these days. I don't know if it's because the main female character is blind, but the author chose to describe objects and places in such a way that you cannot not see them yourself. That the story mostly takes place in France is not why I love this book, although I knew all the cities he were talking about since I'm living near them for most of them. This book is haunting. It is very long and at times, you will want to take a break, but it is worth it to keep reading until the last page. This story broke my heart in many ways. Do not expect a love story in the true sense of it for there is no romance in it but the love the characters have for each other is enough to make you feel.
