Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”


So, I am hoping to do an update in each major blog project these week.  Even the blog projects that you were sure I had forgotten about.  I shall begin this goal with a book review.  Because that really is a major, major blog project.



I read this book at the recommendation of a friend, Johanna.

 Marie-Laure is a blind French girl who lives with her father in Paris in World War II.  Eventually, she and her father find their way to the Breton town of St. Malo, where Marie-Laure and her father may have been entrusted with a valuable and dangerous jewel.  Meanwhile, orphan Werner is growing up in a mining town in Germany.  When he and his sister find a broken-down radio, Werner's mind flourishes learning about, building and fixing radios.  His talent with mechanics and electronics earns him a position in a austere Hitler Youth Academy.  Towards the end of the war, Werner finds himself with the special responsibility of tracking resistance cells by triangulating the radio signals.  But as the war wages, he starts to be unable to tell himself that they are, as he always told himself, just numbers.  Just equations.  Just math.  When his duties take him to St. Malo, his path will converge with Marie-Laure's, and we learn just what humans will and will not do.

To be honest, when I first started reading it, I was a little bit nervous.  It had a very artsy feel to it, and present tense prose to boot.  It felt almost like it was maybe trying too hard.  But, now I have to change my statement about present-tense prose.  I no longer hate present tense prose.  I had present tense prose with one very notable exception.  And that exception is All the Light We Cannot See.  This book is one of those books that had phrases and passages that just made me cry by their sheer beauty.  And I'm not exaggerating.  I can think of two specific passages that were so gorgeous that my soul sang in resonance and I cried.  This isn't even starting to talk about the beautiful story and themes of right, wrong, human resilience, human conscience, loyalty and suffering.  But the language alone was enough to call this book a masterpiece.

I would really recommend it to anyone and everyone!  5 stars. 

Comments

Evelyn said…
The lyrical prose of this book made my heart both sing and weep!
January 14, 2016 at 1:22 AM
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