Book Review: All The Light We Cannot See

Hey everyone! I've been so busy with homework lately and other events that I didn't get to blog last week. In New York, we've gotten over a foot of snow in the last day. It's crazy! If you haven't picked up in the past, I read a lot of books. I've been wanting to share my reads with all of you lately. A few months back, I read a book called All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. I was recommended this book by my father, and he was recommended it by my grandmother. This book made it's debut on the top sellers for weeks. I absolutely loved this book, and I could not put it down. I read it on the train every morning and afternoon for 2-3 weeks straight.

Synopsis on Amazon:

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.

My Thoughts:

This book is beautifully written. At first, I thought this was going to be a just sad (but very good) World War II story, but it was more than just a story based off of a war. The book does skip years and points of view every few chapters, which gets confusing, but eventually it comes together. The three main characters don't fully see each other fort the majority of the book, which is odd for a book but I loved it. I, personally loved the character Marie-Laure because of her determination and ability to confront the unknown. She deals with hardships along the way and she overcomes them with much more strength than most teenagers.

I was having a discussion about this book with my English teacher, and he was surprised with the fact I read book because he was a huge fan of it. He thought the book was very well written and he recommended it other fellow teachers, that's kind of what I am doing here. A common theme of reviews I have heard about this book is how it shows a different light on the people of World War II. I don't want to give too much of the book away, but the ending left me heartbroken. The epilogue gives some condolence for those of you, who are like me, and obsess over endings of books.  I recommend this book because there are highs and lows, and the light and dark of the time before and during World War II.

Some Favorite Quotes:

"The girl sits very still in the corner and wraps her coat around her knees. The way she tucks her ankles up against her bottom. The way her fingers flutter through the space around her. Each a thing he hopes to never forget" (469)

“It's embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.”

“A line comes back to Marie-Laure from Jules Verne: Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”

“The brain is locked in total darkness, of course, children, says the voice. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”

“Seventy-six years old," she whispers, "and I can still feel like this? Like a little girl with stars in my eyes?”


I hope you guys liked this book review. I have plenty of more to come in the future! Have you ever read All the Light We Cannot See? Will you? 


                                                                      xx
                                                          Christina Madeleine