Book review: All the light we cannot see

"Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever."

Marie-Laure is a young girl living in Paris. She loves to explore the world around her, learn about snails and fossils and read Jules Verne's books. Her father is working as a locksmith in the Museum of Natural History and takes her with him every day. Due to a rare disease, Marie-Laure lost her eyesight when she was little and in order to help her learn how to walk to and from the museum, her father builds a detailed miniature model of their neighbourhood. In it every street, corner and house is exactly as the original ones and Marie-Laure soon becomes able to orientate herself in the vastness of Paris. When the Second Wold War breaks out, her father takes her to Saint-Malo, where his uncle has a house. And he builds another miniature model of the town so that his daughter has no problem to find her way easily. 

Hundred kilometres away, another story runs parallel to Marie-Laure's. A young boy, Werner Pfennig and his sister grow up in an orphanage in Nazi Germany. They are both fascinated by science and Werner is very capable making and repairing things with his hand, especially radios. Werner dreams of a future that will allow him to learn more about maths and physics, yet his talents lead him to a Hitler Youth Academy, which is his only chance to escape working in the mines of his town and dying like his father. When the war starts, he is sent to the front to track down the enemy's radio stations. 

The story moves back and forth in time - before, during and after the war - between the main characters. It navigates from the ugliness of life to its beauty, from the morality of the one's actions to their sensitivity, hopes and dreams. The stories seem to have nothing in common as they run parallel to one another; towards the end the lines meet and all the pieces come together. 

Doerr has a magical way to write. It is a prose that uses words so beautifully that the lines flow beneath the reader's eyes and lead him more and more into the story and the lives narrated. The movements of the body, the feel of something touched, the words spoken, the feelings endured; the reader is in there, too. 

There is a lack of dialogues, but this acts in favour of the story; in this case the descriptive writing captivates all the senses and helps the author to invite us into the atmosphere of that time. What I, personally, did not like that much is the attempt to put something of a mystery novel within a historical one; the story also involves the quest of a mythical precious stone, which is said to have magical powers for who possesses it. The fantasy may give something original to the rest of the setting, but it does not bind that well.

Nevertheless, it is book so well written that you will not regret the time spent on it.

+ beautiful prose, engaging story

- the attempt to mix two types of novels in one

Anthony Doerr speaks about what inspired him to write this novel in this video.

(written by FK for Walkley Library)

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