All the Light We Cannot See

Novel by Anthony Doerr

I feel a little inadequate here. I'm not sure I even need to be writing about this book, which it seems everyone has read, and loved, and already talked about with their real book clubs.

But I'll just put in my little piece anyway.

Yes. Yes to all of it. I loved this book. I actually don't really want to have loved it as much as I did, because it was emotionally exhausting, and a little slow at times, and not a happy-happy ending, but Doerr won me over anyway, and in a big way.

This is a tale of two intersecting lives on opposite sides of World War II. A German boy and a French girl both have extreme obstacles in their childhood: he is a poor but brilliant orphan and she is the blind but cherished daughter of a museum locksmith. Interspersed with the stories of their early lives is the narrative of the day they meet, a day of battle between Allied and German forces in a small town in France.

I'm usually a character girl; it's the people of a book that usually grab me and keep me coming back and then make me miss them when it's over. Case in point: I watched the last Harry Potter movie with my daughter tonight and cried when it was over because I was sad to say goodbye again to Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny (Ginny's my favorite). But anyway, strangely enough, I didn't truly love any of the characters in All the Light. They are too real, too flawed as humans. I also didn't love the ending, but I respect it greatly because it's also real. Doerr gave a very honest treatment to everything in the world that he created. What I did love about the book are the intersections, of the two parallel timelines and of the characters's experiences and development. Marie-Laure and Werner are on opposite sides of a war but are so very similar in their ideas and both so broken and fragile that when they come together, it's as if they save each other. It feels magical and other worldly to me. I could almost hear the music that would be playing if it were a movie.

Isn't it interesting, why we love certain books and stories? I think it's amazing that so many different people love the same books, that books can reach us in many different ways and for a variety of reasons, but they do reach us all the same.