All the Light we Can not See by Anthony Doer (Review)

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel by Anthony Doerr. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book is masterfully done. The author begins with a sixteen-year-old blind French girl on the upper story of a tall house on the sea on the edge of France. It is August 1944, and she hears planes headed her way. A piece of paper with the smell of gasoline in the window, an empty house. The author jumps to a young eighteen-year-old German private moving through an old hotel as the 88 artillery guns aim their 22.5-pound rounds at the fast-approaching ally targets from that same city. Back and forth, the author goes weaving a tale in and out of time connecting the dots. As a reader, I was held in suspense, reminded of the horrors of war, and yearning for relief for the characters.

This 500-page book has at this time over 28,000 reviews on Amazon with over 4.5 stars. There is some swearing and graphic violence. However, in war, you would expect that. I would want my kids to be 16 or older to read this book. We will be discussing this book in our next men's book club meeting in October, if you are in the area and have read the book. You are welcome to join us.

From Amazon:

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

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