Friday, August 21, 2015

Book Review: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr


All the Light We Cannot See
''Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.''

For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic layers within the invaluable diamond that her father guards in the Museum of Natural History. The walled city by the sea, where father and daughter take refuge when the Nazis invade Paris. And a future which draws her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler Youth












I really didn’t know what this book was about when  I bought it.  I know I saw it on a lot of blogs (mind you I never actually did read the reviews….please read mine), and I just kind of skimmed the back before I got into it. I kinda wish I did. 

Don’t get me wrong. It was beautifully written and you felt a connection to every character. It just didn’t grab me. A way I tell if a book deserves more than 3 stars is if I can’t wait to read and finish it. This was not the case for this book. 

So what is this book about?

First, it  is split into two parts, going back and forth. Only a few times this was confusing. 

It is set in WW2, but it really doesn’t focus to much on the usual Nazi/Holocaust theme. Which was actually kind of nice.  It focuses mainly on the occupation of France, more specifically D-Day. 

Part 1: Werner, a German orphan who gets into a Nazi training school. At first this seems like such an honour, but he does question things - as he isn’t necessarily the best, he ins’t the worst either. Just going through the motions. The one thing that Werner excels at is fixing radios. This of course doesn’t go unnoticed and his ‘career’ as a soldier who deals with transmittance begins.  His story shows that Germans were also treated unfairly in the war as well. 

The 2nd part, and the part that I enjoyed reading more was about Marie Laure. A blind girl in Paris. Her dad, a museum worker, makes sure that her blindness isn’t  a disadvantage, so much that he makes a replica of the town they are living in so she can go and wander about on by her self.  Underlying this story is this ‘magical’ and highly precious blue stone that harbours a myth with it. Her dad may be one of the few people who might have the real one. Which of course is hidden so that it doesn’t get in the wrong hands (i.e- the Nazi)

Werner and Marie Laure eventually meet and the stories interlock.


Again, this wasn’t a bad book by any means. I see where it gets the praise. It just never grabbed me in the way other books have. 

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