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All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Historical fiction

All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

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Quick take

The only novel about World War II you need (besides The Flight Portfolio) ;)

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, 400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Inspirational

    Inspirational

  • Illustrated icon, Sad

    Sad

  • Illustrated icon, Critically_Acclaimed

    Critically acclaimed

Synopsis

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant 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 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.

Why I love it

In times of great hardship, it is easy to become cynical and despair. This makes it all the more remarkable when people in these circumstances nonetheless choose courageously to practice kindness and care in acts small and large. Anthony Doerr’s opus, All the Light We Cannot See, is a book filled to the brim with such acts. A moving hymn to defiant human spirit.

The novel flits between the perspective of two young people muddling through the violence and confusion of WWII and life under occupation. Marie-Laure, a young blind French girl, has just fled Paris with her father to hide away with her uncle who lives by the sea. There she becomes fascinated by mollusks and studies them zealously each day. Across the border, Werner a German orphan develops a knack for repairing radios and interpreting their frequencies. These skills eventually get him enlisted in resistance efforts. We watch throughout as these two young people who have bottomed out or nearly so families rather than retreat into their shells like Marie-Laure’s beloved mollusks, instead, again and again, confront darkness with light.

Anthony Doerr is a special writer and in All the Light We Cannot See he is at the height of his powers. Each sentence sings, imbued with great moral and emotional resonance. And he confronts the most potent questions of why we are put on this earth and how we fight our face our biggest obstacles together without betraying the angels of our better nature. What more can we ask for from a great book?

Member ratings (11,087)

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Historical fiction
View all
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
The Women
Husbands & Lovers
Shelterwood
A Thousand Times Before
All We Were Promised
Spitting Gold
The Seventh Veil of Salome
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
The Great Divide
The Storm We Made
The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard
Lessons in Chemistry
The Frozen River
What We Kept to Ourselves
Take My Hand
The Last Russian Doll
The First Ladies
The House Is On Fire
River Sing Me Home
The Attic Child
Malibu Rising
The Book of Longings
Hester
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
The Nightingale
Daisy Jones & The Six
The Lincoln Highway
The Secret Book of Flora Lea
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
The Circus Train
Peach Blossom Spring
Hang the Moon
Booth
The Good Left Undone
The Perishing
The Family
Things We Lost to the Water
The Spectacular
Still Life
Send for Me
The Magnolia Palace
The Bookbinder
China Room
This Tender Land
Atomic Love
All the Light We Cannot See
The Vanishing Half
Outlawed
The Four Winds
Independence
The Fountains of Silence
Libertie
Queen of Thieves
The Great Believers
The Clockmaker's Daughter
A Gentleman in Moscow
The Great Alone
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
Rules of Civility
Circling the Sun
The Moor's Account
Jacqueline in Paris
Don't Cry for Me
The Christie Affair
Bloomsbury Girls
The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle
Bronze Drum