All the Light
We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr
Genre:
Historical Fiction
Published:
2014
Major Awards:
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2015)
There are so many places I could begin in reviewing this
book, so let me start with an informal phrase I uttered when talking about this
book with friends: This is the least
warry World War II book I’ve ever read. Simply put, while this book follows
the plight of several characters before, during, and after the war, its focus
is on those characters and how their lives intertwine – not on the vast scope
of the War itself. Each choice that each character makes can and does have
unforeseen and far-reaching consequences, and this book shares two major ideas
with Rowling’s Harry Potter works,
including the necessity of doing what’s right instead of what’s easy and the
fact that it’s our choices that define who we are. Hmmm. It seems that within
the course of writing this paragraph, I’ve talked myself out of my original
statement. What could be more relevant to war than the extreme circumstances
that people find themselves in and the importance of the decisions they make?
The second characteristic I would like to note reflects
my only real criticism. The treatment of time is somewhat jarring. We move
forward and backward in time along three different story arcs, waiting for them
to intersect. This non-linear progression proves difficult to follow at times,
especially if listening to an audiobook, according to a friend. Experienced
readers know as soon as they are introduced to both Marie-Laure, a young,
French, highly intelligent blind girl, and Werner, a mathematical and
mechanical prodigy recruited by the Hitler Youth, that their lives will
intersect. We spend about 2/3 of the book waiting for that to happen. While
Werner unwittingly helps endanger Marie-Laure’s life, will his past experiences
prompt him to help her? I felt like I had been stuck in a time vortex for
hundreds of pages before I found out, and while it was all beautifully written,
it did, at times, feel exhausting. Perhaps that was Doerr’s intention.
Shouldn’t a book about such things feel jarring, uncomfortable, and unreal? I
get it, but I feel that this structure was employed with more craft at some
points than in others.
Speaking of structure, I absolutely loved the artistry of
the sentences in this book. Alas, I do not have my copy handy or I would share
some beautiful examples. The short chapters aid in devouring the book and
processing the power of the words before moving forward. The imagery –
especially sensory imagery, especially as experienced by Marie-Laure – serves as
a powerful means of drawing the reader into the characters’ experiences while
reminding us to notice the minute details around us. Her loving father, a locksmith
by trade, painstakingly crafts two model cities with small wooden replicas of
streets and buildings in order to allow his daughter to “see” her world through
her fingertips in an inspiring act of fatherly love and devotion.
While Marie-Laure grows up in relative stability, this is
not Werner’s experience, though he escapes hard physical labor due to his
prodigious engineering skills and his Aryan features. These traits make him a
valuable member of the Hitler Youth, even if he does not agree with their
tactics and ideology. Nonetheless, we watch Werner struggle with whether to
take action to do the right thing or serve as a bystander. At times, he finds
himself in both roles, and he carries the weight of his inaction and inability
to help his friend and another victim, a young girl, with him as long as he
lives. Werner reminds readers that painting all Germans during the war with the
same brush does not allow us to honor the special lives affected in the madness
of the war on all sides. There were many murderers, torturers, and bystanders,
but how many Werners were there?
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