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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Beautifully woven story about a blind French girl and a German boy during WWII.
The beautiful story of a blind French girl and a German boy in Occupied France.
Absolutely, perfectly gut-wrenching
Kind of confusing at times
A really wonderful read!
Using chapters that are much shorter than one normally finds, Anthony Doerr weaves a gripping story from multiple points of view that provides a picture of World War II far different than almost anything we’ve read or seen, because it focuses on individuals instead of equipment or battles. The daily struggles of a blind girl, the internal …
A lyrical, ponderous tome of war and its legacy set in Germany, Paris and around the sea-side fortress town of Saint Malo, alternating between the viewpoints of conqueror and vanquished, where what is clear is that everyone loses in the end.
Marie-Laure is a blind teenager living with her widowed father in Paris, where he is a locksmith for the …
Just do yourself a favor and read this! The story is incredible and the writing is too good One of my favorites!
Another World War II book I absolutely loved. From a writing perspective, I’m amazed when an author can remove an entire sense (such as sight, in this case), and still have the character and scenes from that character’s point of view be full and rich.
The book was fantastic…until the end. I really wish the ending had more substance to it. I feel it was safe way to end the book.
A huge thought-provoker.
A beautifully written story about a young blind girl in Paris during World War 2.
Phenomenal.
A great read. Very realistic and readable prose.
Wonderful, wonderful book! Beautifully written, realistic and suspenseful. It was like being hidden in a tiny little sea town during the war.
A well-written book. This is on many levels a tragic book but so well-written that one is drawn into the story and feels a kinship with the characters. It will break your heart but also inspire you to be a kinder person.
Well written. Grasps readers attention. A page turner.
Beautiful, sad, engaging. Hated to finish it
Fabulous page turner about one point in time and how each character get there is a terrific WWII story told in a VERY creative way.
Absolutely beautiful.
Very good read