All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

First things first: Cover Art

I don't know what part of the book this cover art is supposed to be from but because of the ocean I'm assuming it's Saint-Malo. I like how it's cast in a shade of blue so it's easy to look at and the details are just muted enough that my eye's see the image as a whole and not just bits and pieces of it. 

Summary:

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"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."

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My Review

This book was gorgeous. Absolutely stunning. When I first heard about this book I wondered what all the hype was about, it wasn't a movie and it wasn't going to become a movie so why was it so popular? And now I know why. Doerr's writing is some of the best I've read in a long time, as an author myself (I'll post on that a different day, don't worry), I know how hard it can be to paint with words while still making them simple at the same time. Doerr makes this look easy, but apparently it took him ten years to write this masterpiece. This book is set in Nazi Germany and is told mainly through the points of view of a blind girl and a brilliant boy who is fighting for the Nazi's. Their stories are incredibly different and the flow of them was just absolutely perfect, never once was I left wondering how they fit together. You know from flashes into the future that these two will eventually meet up you just have to ride the amazing story line to get there. Marie-Laure as a character... if I could meet her in person I would. I love how she looks at the world, she can't see so she sees through touch and memory. Her voice in this story is honestly my favorite which is why I think it complements so well with Werner's. Werner is the boy fighting for Nazi Germany and his life is incredibly different from Marie-Laure. Marie-Laure is no longer a child by the end of this book, but she still retains a sense of innocence that Werner looses very quickly in this novel. Their stories entwine with a mysterious gem, and everything else that was going on at the time. I was really surprised to find out that this book wasn't taking place in a Concentration Camp so it was incredibly interesting to see what life was like outside of those camps.

There is one section of this book towards the end that made me say the above statement. I knew it probably needed to happen to add to the complexity and beauty of the story line but still my heart broke just a little bit. I actually had to read the section four different times to make sure I wasn't just misinterpreting it. You will fall in love with pretty much all the characters in this book and long to read more about them long after you turn the last page. 

Highly recommend this book, if you only read one book a year than it really should be this one.

Rating: 10 out of 10. Amazing, amazing book. No wonder it's so popular.

Content Rating: 4 (18+). Takes place in Nazi Germany and other areas in Europe. There is quite a bit of violence, swearing and other things not suitable for younger readers.