Book review: All The Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr (Reviews By Mom)

 

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 Marie-Laure 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.

Review By Mom.

All The Light We Cannot See truly is a beautiful and compelling story. It's about young people who grew up in different circles, each with their own expectations, with the grim war as the theme throughout the story. It's  magnificent how all the pieces off the puzzle eventually fall into place. 

Anthony Doerr's descriptions of both the character's lives and how each of them experience the war, are incredible.

I highly recommend this book. Magnificent read.