Winner of the Pulitzer Prize A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book* A National Book Award finalist * From Anthony Doerr, the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning author of Cloud Cuckoo Land, 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 … France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. 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, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. 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).
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I’m a fan of historical fiction and also characters who ring true. This book nails both. You get caught up in these youngsters who are caught up in world events that are so much larger than they are. How they cope with it and each other is inspiring, especially in these days where we seem to be crawling towards darkness once more. I believe light …
Beautifully written from two different characters. You get to care deeply and keep wondering how their lives will intersect. Nazi Germany and France are the backdrop. I didn’t want to put it down.
This is a beautiful book, filled with metaphors that will make you weep. Written as two separate stories about two children and the effects of World War II on their lives.
Werner and Marie-Laure are as different as night and day, yet they both possess an intense curiosity to learn. Werner Pfennig lives with his younger sister in an orphanage in …
Not my usual type of reading, but I like to step outside my comfort zone. This was a beautiful book, and I absolutely understand why it won the Pulitzer in 2015. For me it was 4 stars simply because, compelling storytelling aside, I found this book easy to put down. It was even and consistent in its pacing, but that’s not always a good thing. …
There were sentences I just kept reading over and over…
‘Spellbinding’ is an overused expression, but I’m still truly bound. I read until late last night and could hardly wait to wake up this morning to finish this. It’s not just the tale of two children in 1930s/40s Europe, it’s not just tragedy, joy, enlightenment, courage, fear. It’s not just the wide geographical range from the eastern front to …
All the Light We Cannot See
I didn’t think it would affect me as much as it did. I could not put the book down no matter how I wanted to do it, no matter how many times I told myself to stop reading it, put it aside, and not look anymore. I can’t review this book the way I would any other. It is its own little world. I want to reach inside it and …
For me, this was a perfect novel.
Just a beautifully written book about someone who has almost all odds against her for survival. Yet she thrives with the help of others, particularly one boy. You find yourself rooting for these characters to make it, especially when all seems doomed.
ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE September 2016
Author, Anthony Doerr won the Pullitzer Prize for Fiction with this book last year, and I can see why. An epic about the frailty and resilience of the human heart, “All the Light we Cannot See” has two main characters: blind, sixteen-year-old Parisienne, Marie-Laure, and the brilliant, orphaned Werner, …
This is a long book but I finished it in a couple of days. Kept telling myself that I would just read a few more pages. Next thing I knew it was 3 AM.
A haunting, yet moving portrayal of beauty in the midst of tragedy. The characters are fully developed and memorable. I could not put it down.
What a beautifully written story! The characters are unexpected – a blind girl and a Hitler youth. The book is structured with parallel stories of these two until the stories converge. The author does a great job of developing the characters and making the reader feel a part of the story. I am so very glad that I read this book and it is now a …
I enjoyed Doer’s writing style and his world-building. He wrote a wonderful story of a blind girl who grew up at the time of Nazi occupation and her escape into Paris to be safe from harm. He portrayed her moving around so well I felt like I was there with her. The insight into how a blind person learns to walk around a city and home on her own …
I love history and prefer to imagine it through the eyes of a person’s experience instead of simply reading the facts. Anthony Doerr goes a step further by taking the reader into the heart and mind of young girl coming to age and experiencing WWII without her vision. The feel, the sounds and the smells of life during this era come to life. …
Yes, I wish it was twice as long! St. Malo is definitely a destination I intend to visit soon. There was so much emotion in this book – and the face of both sides in the war humanized. It has touched me forever.
It’s beautiful, it’s heart-breaking, it’s vivid. Two characters, two seemingly unlikely to ever cross paths, but do, through the course of WWII as the Germans arrive in France.
Doerr brings a world of light and sound and darkness together through two stories: one from the point of view of a young blind girl who learned her way around thanks to …
A great, original novel about heroism during WWII. Doerr has created memorable characters, a striking setting, and wonderful language that lingers.
I would love to see ‘All the Light We Cannot See’ be made into a movie since this is storytelling at its finest. Filming would have to evoke a dark and moody ambiance, with flashes of light, as the story ebbs and flows through its two utterly suspenseful storylines. Heart wrenching and heart pounding as only novels of war can be.
Read this. I don’t care what else you read in your life but read this. This story was beautifully captivating. A story of a blind girl in the time of World War II. I cannot praise this book enough. It takes you down a different road of the holocaust.