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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Fiction and history with a little mystery are brought together in this bittersweet story that keeps your interest right to the very end. I really enjoyed this book.
Chapter after chapter, the voice of the vulnerable young girl who is full of hope for her father’s return, is interrupted by that of a soldier who is determined to hunt her down. This alone is reason enough to keep turning the pages. But the beautiful language, the perfectly-chosen words in each description make the book pure joy.
Beautiful flow of words
For years, I had intended to read this book but never got around to it. My goodness, what I missed! I simply cannot say enough good thinks about this remarkable piece of literature. Compelling and heartbreaking, it will astound all who read it.
One of the best books I have ever read. If the books were not so expensive, I would assign to my AP Lit students.
One of the best books written. The language is beautiful and the story riveting.
Best book I read last year.
ugg… This book had so much potential.. But never truly left you feeling finished! It just told all these different stories and plots and never completely tied things together with a bam…. I feel like I wasted my time and need to finish the story… IDK sorry but it was a long read and I felt like it left me …
Just couldn’t get into this one
One of the best written historical/WW II / character novels I have read in many years. A very unusual story.
Very slow moving. Not worth it to me.
A magnificent achievement. Such depth of detail, takes you deeply inside the heart and mind of a blind girl trying to protect her father’s legacy, and precious documents, in a world of wartime, occupied France…escaping the scrutiny of German soldiers after a document they cannot find. And only a blind girl knows the secret. Her friendship …
I found the jumping back and forth between characters and also between periods of time a bit confusing.
great WWII story
Enjoyed the manner in which the characters and places were woven together
A book you will not forget.
One of my all time favorite books. It is two separate stories, one a beautiful love story set during Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and a second modern day story of a woman struggling to be a super mom to her autistic child. Somehow these two stories become one on a beautiful way that makes us realize what life was like in Europe during WE II.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
May 6, 2014
Scribner
531 pages
Historical fiction, WWII, book club
Rating: 3-1/2
5/19/19-7/26/19
my third attempt
Started book 4 years ago
“It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it I. The ways we have without the radio.” -Joseph Goebbels
3-1/2 stars. I know my opinion …
Books like this don’t come around that often. Just an excellent book.
“All The Light We Cannot See” is an incredible book by an incredible writer. It spent two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list and the author Anthony Doerr won a Pulitzer Prize. It’s the story of a blind French girl and a German boy who’s paths collide in occupied France during the second World War. I had the good fortune to …