All the Light We Cannot See

I think i'm not very good at rating things low, I really enjoyed this one too! It was an incredible book that dives into the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner during World War II. One standout moment that really got to me was when they finally meet in the war-ravaged city of Saint-Malo. It's this intense and emotional scene where their stories collide, and you can feel the power of their connection despite everything going on around them. "Open your eyes and see what you can before they close forever."... a reminder to treasure the precious moments in life. Doerr's storytelling is truly exceptional, and "All the Light We Cannot See" is a book that will stay with me!

This book is one of the most moving and gripping heartfelt war-time novels I have read in a long time. Telling the story of a young blind French girl and her relationship with her devoted father, and a young orphaned German boy, and the connection they do not realise they have which is realised at the end of the book. This book is beautifully and sensitively written, full of suspense, kindness and cruelty, providing a very humanistic perspective of living, surviving and dying the horror and reality of war. I loved the descriptions of both characters and how they dealt with their experiences, especially Werner and how he managed the expectations of him by his sister and the Nazi party, the writing was very deep on an emotional level and really thought provoking. The only thing I struggled with initially was the time jumps and where they placed the characters in their lives.

This is a moving and poignant story which captivated me from start to finish. The beautiful writing and vivid imagery make this book a real treat. I felt immersed in the world the author had created, and for the duration of the novel when I wasn't physically reading it I was thinking about it. Superb.

Marie-Laure is a 12-year old girl living in Paris as the Nazis are about to invade. She is blind and relies on her loving father for everything. He works at the Natural History Museum and she accompanies him to work most days and becomes fascinated by the stories that are held there. Meanwhile Werner and his sister are growing up in an orphanage in Germany. Werner has a natural flare for engineering and becomes particularly fascinated by radios and their inner workings. As the war progresses, Marie-Laure and her father flee to the relative safety of St Malo to live with a reclusive Uncle and Werner is recruited by the Nazis to a unit responsible for tracking down and destroying resistance radio operators. The story jumps backwards and forwards through time frames and is also told from the Points of View of both Marie-Laure and Werner. Inevitably the book is leading up to a meeting of the ways of the two main characters and that journey is told in this book.

There is a lot to like about this book. The two main characters, and indeed many of the eclectic supporting cast, are very well developed. As a reader, I felt I knew them quite well by the end of the book and I enjoyed their company. The storyline has a lot of potential and is well thought out. The book, although long, is broken up into very short chapters which makes it more manageable. Above all there is a feelgood element to this book - Marie-Laure and Werner are good people with the innocence of youth on their side and even the atrocities of war do not manage to corrupt or disillusion them.

However, for me, the book was not without its problems. In places I found that it dragged and became tedious and dull. This was largely because it was too long-winded and protracted and would have benefitted from some strict editing.
The second major problem was the way that it constantly jumped around between timeframes. This is one of my pet hates but seems to have become a very popular gadget in contemporary writing. Whilst I can just about live with the odd flashback to give some context or background (although it’s not entirely clear to me why these can’t also be incorporated into the body of the book), I cannot see any reason why it might be necessary, or even desirable, to constantly switch from one timeframe to another in order to tell the story. At the risk of sounding even more geriatric than I actually am, in the good old days authors seemed to be capable of telling a story in a linear way, following a natural timeline. Why has this gone out of fashion? If the odd book adopted the “jumping around” approach then it might have some charm and be seen as quirky and unique but it seems to have become the norm. I personally find this irritating and have a sneaking (unsubstantiated) suspicion that it may be easier to write a book this way and that it is therefore a lazy way of creating a literary work. Anyway, rant over.

I would hesitate to recommend this book too enthusiastically, largely because of its length. However, I would also like to reiterate that it is not a bad book and that my comments do not necessarily conform to public opinion, the majority of which seems very positive. Although I will not actively be chasing up his current book which has just been released, I would not object if it landed on my doorstep.

I really could not get into this book.
I only managed to get to chapter 3 before giving up.
Just not my type of read.

This is one of the best books I’ve read in awhile. The character development is so readable and enticing. In parts it does get a bit long winded, but that is easily dismissed as the story lines are page turners. The juxtaposition of the little blind girl and the near genius German soldier works well. I loved everything about this book, including the meticulous writing style, the pace of the story and the sheer brilliance of the tale.

* Thanks to publishers, 4th Estate, and to The Reading Agency, for a free copy for a fair review. *

I really enjoyed this - a corker of a book! A tad on the long side at just over 500 pages, which maybe some readers might find a little daunting, but well worth a leap of faith into the world of highly intelligent and blind French girl, Marie-Laure, and awkward German boy-genius, Werner, and this completely engaging story of how they navigate the Second World War from the fall of France until their lives intersect during the Battle of St Malo. Along the way, we learn about Werner’s orphan background, the lure of the Hitler Youth for lost boys like him and that not all Germans were taken in by the Nazis. We also learn about Marie-Laure’s devoted father, who makes facsimile models of Paris, then St Malo, to help his blind daughter learn her way around the streets of their neighbourhood.

With plenty of close shaves and pathos to pique your emotions, ultimately this is gripping historical fiction at its very best, which had me on the edge of my seat and will linger in my memory for a very long time!

Although this book is very descriptive and beautifully written, I really struggled with the story line and found it far too long and quite dull. I am sorry to say that I eventually abandoned reading this half way through. I’m pleased that a lot of people found the book to be brilliant but unfortunately it wasn’t for me.

I enjoyed this book, impressed by Doerr's ability to make something that could be over-familiar fresh and worth the attention of readers who would consider themselves jaded when it comes to a WWII setting. I think this is largely down to the two young persons whose stories form the basis for the narrative. Its weakest aspect, for me, is the tacked on thriller plotline about the cursed diamond that adds little to the story and wouldn't be missed if excised.

Doerr's descriptive writing is full of wonderful imagery and period atmosphere, employing all the senses to draw the reader into its beautifully created world, in particular wartime St Malo, a place I know and love.

An absorbing novel with a brilliantly told story. The main characters, Werner and Marie Laure, really come to life. There are elements of fable: the red-haired blind French girl with a face full of freckles, the gifted German child-man with sticky out ears and shockingly white hair, on opposite sides of a war that exacts a huge price on those who went through it, with a legacy we live with today.

I raced through its final chapters, so you can definitely say it's a page turner. The ending doesn't quite work. Part of me wishes Doerr had stopped in 1945, though bringing it forward to 2014 allows him to raise the question of war guilt. However this did not affect my pleasure reading the book.

There are strong thematic threads linking and tying together characters and stories. In the end, it's a story about human strengths and weaknesses that asks you to see good and bad on both sides, through the perspectives of two children caught up in the conflict, how they react, how they are changed, how who they are allows them to face the lives they've been dealt by fate and circumstances. Altogether a brilliant read.

I thought there was a really good storyline, the characters were well developed and likeable and the author had a style of writing which evoked the sights, sounds, fears and tribulations of the times. The chapters are short but there are lots of them because the book is quite long, possibly a little too long. Overall it is well worth a read and I suspect the characters will stay with you for some time afterwards.

Read as part of a RGFE promotion with Gloucester Book Club.

All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Incredibly fortunate to have been chosen by the publisher 4th Estate to read this wonderful page-turner of a novel. Set in WWII the story revolves around two teenagers - a French blind girl Marie-Laure and a brilliant young German, Werner.

It delves into the complexities of war and into the lives of these two characters and the events that bring them together. It’s heart rending, uplifting and manages to tap in to human experience and suffering, both when being occupied and the occupier. It’s beautifully written, with some very short chapters interspersed with longer ones.

What stands out most is survival and endurance during wartime. All of the book’s characters are forced to endure the war, but Marie-Laure and Werner demonstrate the strength, determination, and courage needed to survive.

The novel is long and maybe this held me back from reading before now. I’m so glad I’ve finally taken the plunge and been treated to this superb read. It’s one I will remember for a long time to come and thoroughly recommend.

A fabulous book - intricate tender, absorbing. Will seek out other titles by this author. Can I award more than five stars?

St Just Thursday Evening Reading Group 5th September 2019.

All the light we cannot see. Anthony Doerr.

The reading group all agreed that this was a very interesting book; also that it was sad, frightening, and realistic. Most people liked it, though some thought it was too long (others found that the short chapters mitigated this) and that the time switches were confusing.

Readers liked the way that the research which had obviously been done by the author was distilled into a form easily interpretable by the lay-person – particularly with reference to the way radio was developed and used. We also liked the way the characters were painted: Werner was easy to sympathise with, and Frederick came across as a complete contrast to him – a dreamer, while Werner was practical; someone of whom his family had expectations, when Werner had no family at all; and someone who didn't want to be part of what was going on, whereas Werner was recruited into successive parts of the military hierarchy.

Several people remarked on how successfully this book put over the way Hitler appealed to German nationalism. Werner was a young man without much of a stake in the social structure – an orphan, highly intelligent, but not hitherto a part of anything much larger, neither family nor other social grouping. Hitler, he thought, was giving him a place in the German Reich, a chance to use his skills as a radio operative for the good of the country, and that his effort would be rewarded. A lot of the book was about how this turned out not to be the case, but the initial appeal was unmistakable.

We did not agree about the role of the diamond in the narrative. Some thought it was an irrelevance and others saw it as a more significant part of the story, and maybe as a metaphor (for greed, or for concealment). We did agree that the reader is meant to infer that the diamond went back, via the sea cavern under St Malo, to the earth from which it originally came.

As well as discussing the book itself we talked about a number of issues that arose from our readings of it, including systems where political choice is not an option, comparisons with contemporary politics, and several personal stories about the Second World War.

A thought provoking book which led to much discussion in our group. Many struggled with the format finding the constant shifting of time and storyline disruptive. We all loved the central characters and the descriptive narrative engaging and beautifully written. Highly recommend to other reading groups.

Beautifully written and touching and informative

It's no wonder Anthony Doerr won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. This is a superb novel, the sort that takes writing to a higher level.

Our Little Book Club read this in April and everyone was positive about it, although some found the era less interesting than others. We all have quite different tastes in fiction and some of us loved it while others appreciated the writing, but did not feel as involved. I thought it wonderful - the feeling of time and place was hugely compelling and the only reason I have given it 4 rather than 5 stars is that I didn't love the ending. (I can't believe I have the temerity to give a Pulitzer winner only 4!).

Although the main characters are Marie-Laure and Werner, everyone in our book club felt that the more secondary character Frederick was the true hero of the book. We talked about him more than any of the others and oddly enough, everyone said his story was the one they were most moved by.

It was a great choice for a book club as there were so many issues and characters to discuss. Very much recommended.

It took me a while to be hooked but once I was the book just flowed. The story unfolded beautifully and you felt that you got plenty of time to get to know the characters. Such difficult times but interesting to have a snapshot from both sides.

This is a beautifully written story - rarely do I stop in a book and think about the writing but some of the description has blown me away. It is a wonderful read!