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

Title: All the Light We Cannot See
Author: Anthony Doerr
Publisher: Scribner
Published: May 06, 2014

  

 WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times 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 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 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, 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.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times)

I was so glad to have a chance to read this book. I got my e-book copy in NetGalley but unfortunately I wasn't able to download the copy right away then someone special gave me the hardbound copy of this book. I think me and this book is meant to be! LOL. First time that I saw this book months back I think early 2015 in a bookstore. I fell in love with the cover of the book, and the title is just as interesting. I immediately checked the blurb at the back of the paperback copy, just then and there I want to buy the copy but then I was really out of budget until days or months pass by I got busy with work and all... but here ya go! I got really lucky because my special someone surprised me and he bought the book. (THANK YOU!)

As I read the book, to be honest I got confused in some parts because of the chronological order of the events. But in every chapter there was a different reaction, there was this moment when I'm nervous, afraid, happy and so many others but the book or the story itself gives goosebumps to me. It was written so well and carefully detailed, so poetic and interesting, historical and amazing. This is the kind of book where I won't get tired of reading. People kept asking me if this book is good and worth it, now that I fully finished the book my answer is YES IT IS worth your time and money. Just a head up though, the story itself is a puzzle. The book is deep and you have focus on it.

I enjoyed reading the book at the same time my heart breaks for every single person mentioned in the story. I was so afraid for Marie Laure, she's been through a lot of challenges. I imagined myself being in her place I think I will just give up right away but this girl, despite of her condition she fought for what's right and for her life. Things turned upside down to her but she never loses hope. 

What more can I say? I'm not sure the book actually left me with a shattered heart. It also give me that feeling of not reading again after a couple of days or weeks but I have to fight for that feeling so I tried reading other books unfortunately I read a little slower. LOL

I hope other readers will find the book awesome the way I look at it because in my opinion. This is really worth it.

"I'd expect that if God wants us to see something, we'll see it"

"Some people are weak in some ways, sir. Others in other ways"

My Ratings

 

Anthony Doerr is the author of five books, The Shell Collector , About Grace , Memory Wall , Four Seasons in Rome and All the Light We Cannot See . Doerr’s fiction has won four O. Henry Prizes and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. He has won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Rome Prize, the Story Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Award, and the Ohioana Book Award three times. Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho. Become a fan on Facebook and stay up-to-date on his latest publications.

Source: Goodreads