All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All the Lights We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr has written two collections of short stories and three novels since his first collection was published in 2001, with his most recent novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, coming out in 2021. All the Light We Cannot See was published in 2014 and won both the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015. It deals with body shaming and bullying, cancer, death - including children, gun violence, blood, grief, rape, antisemitism, murder, fire, war and injury, and classism.

Marie-Laure, a young, blind, French girl, lives with her father in Paris where she has a unique upbringing. Her father works at the Museum of Natural History and she frequently accompanies him to work where she learns all about the natural world around her that she has not seen since she was six years. Her father builds her a tiny, scale replica of their neighborhood so she can confidently traverse the streets on her own. But when Marie-Laure is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and she and her father flee to live with her great-uncle in Saint-Malo, where her father begins to make a new scale model so that Marie-Laure can better understand the new city she is in. Meanwhile, Werner is an orphan in Germany who discovers an old radio with his younger sister and quickly becomes adept at modifying the device to receive messages from further and further away. His skill with the radio gets him noticed and sent to a school for Hitler Youth, where his education becomes altogether more thorough and brutal and he struggles with what the regime tells him is right and necessary.

All the Light We Cannot See is absolutely beautiful. A story of World War II that I had not heard before with lovely prose and characters who burrow their way into your heart. I will admit, I was not prepared for a WWII story when I started this book and I had a tough time at first getting into the story, but it was not long before I was fully invested. Anthony Doerr paints a vivid picture with characters who are realistic and fully formed, including the small number of secondary characters. All the Light We Cannot See is difficult for me to discuss because it is a dozen tiny stories taking place at the same time. The story of Werner, of Marie-Laure, of Marie-Laure's uncle Etienne, of the Museum of Natural History. And I think it is a beautiful story that I really enjoyed, but because it focuses on Saint-Malo and barely touches the war at large (and it is very delicate when it does), it would be easy to brush away some of the atrocities of the war if you did not take the time to learn more about it. Doerr's prose is stunning, but sometimes you need to read what he isn't saying. This is very much a story of the characters and the journeys they take, which happen to take place during WWII, more than a story of the war itself and I think that is an important distinction to make.

I'm giving All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 4.75 stars out of 5. I really loved it, despite not being in the right mindset when I started the book. I'm likely going to put his newest book, Cloud Cuckoo Land, on my list to read soon.

For more from Anthony Doerr, check out his website https://www.anthonydoerr.com/

I really wanted to incorporate both Madam Manec's peaches and the cake that changed Werner's life, so the recipe for this book is a peach Bundt cake. It also pairs well with having a pseudonym.