Book Bearings
All the Light We Cannot See
- 544 pages · about 9 hours
- First published 2014
- 72 editions
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1 About this book
Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind French girl whose father, the locksmith of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, builds her a wooden model of their neighborhood so that she can learn it by touch. When the Germans occupy Paris in 1940, father and daughter flee to the walled seaside town of Saint-Malo, to the house of her reclusive great-uncle. Werner Pfennig is a German orphan with a gift for building and repairing radios, which wins him a place at a harsh military school and then a role in the war. The novel moves back and forth between the two of them, and between the years before and August 1944, when the fighting brings both to Saint-Malo.
- Survival
- Bildungsromans
- Historical fiction
- Blind
- Youth
- World War II
- Literary fiction
- Friendship
2 What to expect
A Second World War novel that follows a blind French girl and a German orphan with a talent for radios, in alternating chapters, until their paths meet in the siege of Saint-Malo. The chapters are very short, the prose is lyrical and full of sound, touch and detail, and the timeline moves back and forth. It is long but quick to read, more about decency, science and wonder amid destruction than about battles, and it is sad.
Good for readers who want: World War II fiction, lyrical writing, and short chapters that pull you along.
3 About Anthony Doerr
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Anthony Doerr
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