When Mother was in town this summer, she had her nose stuck in a book every chance she got. She finished it up before she left and I couldn’t wait to get started reading. Just a few pages in and I knew why she couldn’t put it down! The great read that captivated both of us was All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
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.
Set in the throes of World War II, the book is beautifully written and deeply moving. It is a tale of people devastated by war and story of those that try to rise above it. The characters will stay with you long after finishing this one, and the perspective is likely quite different from any other WWII novel you’ve read. I can’t say enough good things about this one.
As always, let me know what is on your bedside!
All the Light We Cannot See | On My Bedside Series
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