All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Slower paced and beautifully written, All the Light We Cannot See is set during World War II in Germany and France. The stories of a blind Parisian girl, Marie-Laure, and an orphaned German boy, Werner, are told in a parallel narrative. Family, friendship, compassion/empathy and, of course, survival, all feature in this novel.  We see the characters grow and change and their lives become intertwined as they struggle with questions of good and evil.

Since I was reading digitally, I honestly had no idea that All the Light We Cannot See was 544 pages which is definitely long, but I found myself (like other reviewers) slowing down near the end because I did not want this story and the exquisite writing to be over. This novel is definitely one to savor.

Doerr’s website says that he spent ten years in the writing of All the Light We Cannot See. So well done, expect to see it in movie theaters. In addition, I was happy to note that award-winning Anthony Doerr is an American author since that is one of our requirements for Junior Theme. I will encourage stronger readers who can handle the book’s length to consider this title and I know that our faculty and book group members will also be interested.  I found Doerr’s writing to be so moving that I will also be ordering two collections of his short stories, Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, for use with our English classes.