Book Club

WHITESTONE BOOK CLUB
BOOK REVIEW January 2025

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

 

This Pulitzer Prize winning novel tells the absorbing story of a blind French girl and an orphaned German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and they flee to Saint-Malo, where her reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel - to avoid it falling into Nazi hands. Hidden in the museum vaults for the past 200 years, the greyish-blue sea diamond with a red hue at its centre - the Sea of Flame is said to be cursed.

Her father also creates complex puzzles and miniatures of the streets and houdesolation of the Occupation through the books she can read in braille. It is Jules Verne and Darwin who are the key to her future. She devours Around the World in Eighty Days, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle.

Werner's talent for fixing radios brings him to the attention of the Nazis, and he is sent to a national school that brutally trains an elite team for the Third Reich. The chapters on Werner's schooling, and the fate of his friend Frederick, are the most vivid and violent in the book. He joins the war in a special unit tracking down resistance groups across Europe. Eventually he is sent to Saint-Malo, where Marie Laure's great uncle uses his radio transmitter on behalf of the Resistance. Also the Nazi search for the Sea of Flame diamond continues as the US Air Force blasts the walled city two months after the D-Day landings.

Doerr has written a great story with significant history, science, and natural history content. Snails, molluscs, the creatures of earth and sky, the properties of gemstones and coal, all the technological marvels embraced by the Nazis are described in detail.

Doerr creates a great sense of place and his characters are well defined and believable. It is a gripping read and was highly rated by everyone and enjoyed by the majority of the book club. For two members, this was an even better second read. We discussed how it resonated with the current wars highlighting the human suffering being repeated today. In this wonderful, deeply moving novel, the stories of Marie-Laure and Werner illuminate the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

This more than a conventional war story; it uses prose that resonates deeply and conveys the detail of daily
existence along with high drama, sadness and hope. A very moving novel about bravery and the power of attachment. One of our great reads !

At our next meeting on February 10th, we will review: The Boy from Aleppo who Painted the War by Sumia Sukkar.

 

Jane Rose

Normal People cover   Mirror and the Light cover