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

Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever

I can’t remember why I picked up All the Light We Cannot See but from the start I was interested and I wanted to finish it. I think it was a really great read.

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

Rating:


Title & Author: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Genre: History, Drama
Release date: May 6 2014
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Scribner

Synopsis

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.

I give All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr four out of five hearts because I loved it. The characters were well developed and the story was great. There was just one thing I liked less and that made me change my mind on giving this book a fifth heart.

The book contains two storylines, the one of Marie Laure in France and Werner in Germany. You can see both come from completely different backgrounds and this was visible. It made me sad to think that many boys were like Werner back in the second World War. But both were very well written. The only thing that I would have liked, would have been that the scene at the beginning of the book, where Marie Laure is trying to hide in the attic would have been left out. Because I now was thinking about that scene the entire time and wondered what it was about. The other thing I would have liked would have been for the two storylines to come together earlier because now it was literally the last thing that happened basically.

Marie Laure is blind and I think she is perfectly written. I could experience her confusion because she couldn’t see and her amazement at the new things she gets to explore at her great uncle’s house. It was great.

Werner’s confusion about the war and growing up during that time was very understandable. It really made me wish the world wasn’t this cruel.

I think Anthony Doerr is a great author and I loved this book. I am going to consider reading more by him.

Let me know what you thought of this book!
If you have any requests for which book I should talk about next, please let me know in the comments down below.

For now, let books enrich your life!

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