All the Light we Cannot See: The Breathtaking World Wide Bestseller

The story is written in a non-linear fashion and covers the years 1934-2014… It’s 1934. Marie-Laurie Le Blanc lives in Paris and is six years old when she loses her eyesight and for the first time learns about the priceless “Sea of Flames”- an accursed gemstone with a brilliant blue color and a touch of red at it’s center which lays hidden for the past 200 years in the vaults of the National Museum of Natural History, where Marie’s father, Daniel Le Blanc works as the principle locksmith. Marie shares a very tender and solicitous relationship with her father. Her father builds her a small and an artistic model of the city in which they live, gets her books in Braille, makes her solve ingenious puzzles and tries his best to make Marie-Laurie capable of living life on her own. Her father, with strong dedication and utmost determination, tries to make sure that nothing stops his little chérie from pursuing her dreams and flying high. Werner Pfennig is an eight year old German albino boy who lives with his sister Jutta at an orphanage in Zollverein, Germany. Since his very childhood, Werner has been extremely inquisitive and agog about things going on around him. He shows great enthusiasm and love for radios, transmitters, electronics and mathematics which eventually leads him to acquire schooling in the National Political Institutes of Education. Though he’s thrilled to escape the sentence of working in the mines and dying young like his father, and is delighted to be able to study in the open and tinker with the radios, Werner gradually finds himself all caught up and cornered in the brutality and malevolence of the premier school of Hitler’s Youth. In 1940 as the German hostility advances and Marie and her father, who has been entrusted with the “Sea of Flames”, escape Paris and take shelter in Saint Malo where Marie’s great uncle, Etienne Le Blanc resides, their lives take an unexpected and unsolicited turn and Marie-Laurie some years down the line bumps into the eighteen year old, field expert, Werner Pfennig. What happens next? Will Werner and Marie be able to survive the devastation of the global war? Can they succeed against all odds? Or shall they give into their wretched fate? Shall the “Sea of Flames” cast it’s spell? It will take me one whole day if I get to start talking about this book in particular. There are so many entangled feelings and emotions harboring in me rn that it becomes hard to express myself, really. My heart aches, I am totally bewitched and it’s gonna take me a while before I start reading another book! I simply loved everything about this book. The chapters are short, hardly 2-3 pages long and it makes sure that no reader develops a sense of apathy while proceeding. I loved how Doerr gave a clear insight into the world of Marie-Laurie and Werner Pfennig. I could literally get blind, for a moment, like Marie and feel the things just as she did! Nazi Germany, it’s hostility, malevolence, the lives of the innocents lost, love and power, everything allured me to such an extent that it left me in a complete state of melancholia and tears. This book is certainly not a conventional war story. There’s so much more to it! The radiant beauty of the prose and the intricate details of the things going around, add up to the fine quality of the novel. It was like I am experiencing the haunting era of the WWII. I guess that’s the power of writing. Isn’t it? It took me 5 days to complete the book and 3 days to be done with the review. I literally restrained myself from writing too much and giving out the spoilers. When you a love a book so much, then it gets really hard to express your feelings about it! You fall out of the correct words and actually fail to explain how you feel about it!! And that’s what is happening with me rn lol. I am sure this novel would indeed be a piece of luck for anyone with a long plane journey or a beach holiday ahead. This is a complete page-turner, certainly unputdownable and an entirely absorbing piece of work! I can’t thank the author much for giving me this priceless experience! You guys won’t believe how desperately I want you people to read it! Recommending this novel to all the book lovers out there and even if you aren’t comfortable with the genre, then trust me it wasn’t my genre too until I read this one! I’m sure this particular narrative shall not disappoint you in any way!

The language in the book is perhaps one of the most important bits, it is written with such rich and lively details that at times, I could almost see myself in places where Marie-Laure was or where Werner was. That was one of the most brilliant things about the book. There are many more. I think the fact that the author could transport me to that time period, make me as tense as Marie-Laure or Werner just makes me so happy? Is happy a word to be used when talking about this book, this time period? Maybe not but the author did make me very happy. It’s very important to me that I feel connected to the characters and transported to places in the books and it did that and more. The book jumps from time periods of Marie-Laure’s and Werner’s life, from their teen years to their younger years and back and forth. Sometimes it was a bit confusing to keep track of it, sometimes because it was an e-book, it was even frustrating to not be able to flip back to the pages I lost my thread. (An actual paperback really helps with this, it just gives me satisfaction if nothing else.) Everything about the book made me fall in love with it. There are the usual World War II horrors and you can’t escape them, most times, I was so acutely uncomfortable with the scene but I moved ahead anyway. This book is an absolute must-read if you like reading about the World War II. Not because it’s super informative or because there’s tons of other things that could make you relate to the people of the times more. It’s more to understand how it felt for the children, for those who grew up in Germany and had to join Hitler’s army. For the children who had nobody left, those who couldn’t do much for themselves. Marie-Laure and Werner might be fictional but there were real people who were in their places at some point. They must have faced countless problems and horrors. It is that feeling that makes me think that people should really read it. I have a lot of wonderful things to say about it and I could say it but there’s also the one bit that I felt almost unnecessary in the book. Yes, the hunt for the Sea of Flames. The diamond. That part always felt unnecessary and almost tacked on as if it was an afterthought. I am not saying I didn’t enjoy the fantasy of it and there was a realistic part to it but at the same time, it just didn’t click with the rest of the book. However that does not negate all the awesome things about this book and so, this remains a five-star book. I would recommend it to anyone who loves to read World War II fiction or who wants to see how language can be elevated to this level. If you wanna read in leisure, you totally can!! This book, despite it being based during the World War II, has an almost unhurried pace to it. It’s just me who wouldn’t stop reading. And if you still have any doubts about this book, it’s worth mentioning that it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015. So, there’s that?

The book is placed in a war-torn France and Germany during the third Reich. Its a story of a blind girl Marie-Laure LeBlanc who lives in Paris. Her Papa is a locksmith in the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Though constantly dealing with her physical handicap she grows up in a loving family. To make is easier for his daughter to navigate the streets of Paris Marie’s father creates a small model of the city which allows Marie-Laure to feel her way into the city. This family of two has to move to the coastal city of Saint-Malo to Marie’s great-uncle’s house to flee a German occupied Paris. But, the war eventually reaches them in the quiet, sleepy city. On the other hand is an orphan boy in Germany called Werner who has a way with radios. He lives in the Children’s home with his sister Jutta until an officer recognizes this prodigy and opens the door of the elite military school for him. The raciological exams where Werner’s eye colour is gauged “against a chromatic scale on which sixty or so shades of blue are displayed” and hair colour assessed using “thirty or so other locks clipped to a board” only amplifies the peculiar ways in which the Nazi Germany functioned. From this school he is sent to the frontlines to weed out the radio transmissions of the Allies. In this melee is a treasure hunt for the Sea of Flame, a precious stone which is widely believed to harbor the curse which although protects the beholder but brings misfortune upon everyone the beholder loves. Marie-Laure prays that her “Papa hasn’t been anywhere near it” when infact her father is one of the three men charged with protecting this stone. The story opens in 1944 in Saint-Malo where Marie-Laure is hiding in her house in the face of Allied bombings while Werner is trapped in the ruins of the Bees Hotel. Though most of the story takes place during WWII, the narrative still goes a lot back and forth. The stories seem unconnected on the surface but a fragile thread always wounds it all together. One such connection is a radio transmission that Werner and his sister used to listen to as kids and this broadcast was done by none other than Marie-Laure’s grandfather. The story always seems on course for the collision of the paths of these two individuals. The entire book is spent in expectation of the meeting of the protagonists and the result of this meeting. Like most other books about WWII this book is loaded with suspense, dread and horror in equal proportions. To make it easier for the reader Doerr makes the chapters very short (some chapters are less than a page long) while keeping the number of characters to a minimum. It provides a picture of the war from both sides, both Axis and Allied and the horrors of the war as experienced by the innocent French as well as the Germans. The decades after the war and the specter of war that hangs over the survivors is yet another one of the gems the book touches upon. This book doesn't have the reality of Anne Frank’s diary but has the dreamlike expectation of young love, it neither has the innocently ethereal beauty of The Book Thief but a severely intricate plot. In a world full of WWII narratives, this book certainly holds its own. The book is tragic yet it gives you hope and the story is indeed about all the light we cannot see in the darkness which we believe engulfs us. A must read, entirely absorbing and absolutely un-putdownable.

The book was in good condition.

A rare gem! This sublime bittersweet symphony lulls you into a trance and transports you to a different period where an unusual story unfolds, and all the while, the pages flip themselves effortlessly. This is a story of young hearts and minds in a war torn era -- of hopes and dreams unfulfilled, of promises unkept, of innocence shattered, of friendship, betrayal, guilt and redemption, and above all, the triumph of humanity, kindness and goodness. The story is told with such profoundness and finesse that it's bound to make a lasting impression on your psyche. The story unfolds through the perspective of the young protagonists, Marie-Laure -- a spirited young girl blind since the age of six and living in Paris with her father, and Werner Pfennig -- a German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler youth. War changes the trajectory of their lives, and fate -- or rather, technology -- interwines their lives in strange ways, bringing them to a juncture where each becomes the beacon of hope and the reason for the other's survival. The many supporting characters are equally impactful and unforgettable, and it's endearing to see how people try to be good to one another against all odds. The vivid portrayal of the horrors and brutalities of war, and the tenderness and sensitivity with which human bonds and emotions have been explored, leaves a sweet melancholia lingering in your heart. By far, this is the best fiction I've read based on World War II. "Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever." "Don't you want to be alive before you die?" "... See the world as a scientist, but feel it like a poet..." "All your life you wait, and then it finally comes, and are you ready?" "But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?"

"Open your eyes and see what you can with them, before they close forever" What a journey! What an incredible, heartbreaking, beautiful and bittersweet journey! Poetry disguised as prose - the phrase that comes to mind while reading this book. Strangely, I felt the same while reading The Book Thief, another beautiful story set in those grim years of World War II. What is it about wars that is so fascinating to authors - maybe the atrocities that are committed, the inevitable doom that casts its shadow over both the perpetrators and the victims, or maybe how despite living in the worst of times imaginable to them, people manage to survive but however brave they are, war leaves a black hole in their hearts that can never be filled. All the characters are incredibly well-written, especially Marie-Laure LeBlanc, who I think is probably the most beautiful character ever written. The disruptive non-linear narration only adds to the beauty where chapters flow into one another forming a giant interwoven web of stories that manage to shake you from the core. I'll leave you all with a quote from the book - “You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”

To be honest, it took me sometime to fall in love with this book. The writer has been very generous in giving minute details and descriptions. But while doing so, there are chapters after chapters with only minute details where nothing significant in the story happens. Having said that, I loved how Doerr has built every character, how the story comes together at the end, showing how significant the damages of the war is and how it shapes the characters and lives of each one affected. There are so many elements to love in the book! The relationship between Marie-Laure and her father.. that between her and Etienne.. how much Etienne loved her! That moment when he ventures out of the house after 24 years to find her.. she saying "you came?" Then the brother-sister fights between Warner and Jutta.. the anger inside Jutta which remained throughout the years and even when Volkheimer brought Warner's stuffs to her.. the friendship between Volkheimer and Warner.. how Volkheimer always ensured that there was food for Warner.. how little they talked and were always there for each other.. then Warner's love and admiration for Frederick! I cried like a teenager seeing how Warner fell in love with Marie-Laure at first sight.. how he wanted to pause time and just stay there with her! Meeting Marie-Laure was probably the most beautiful thing that happened to him! And yes! how can I forget Marie-Laure's love for the ocean.. the mullusks! It was lovely reading the book and would recommend it to anyone who loves a good story about hope, about suffering, about freedom, about friendship, about love, about courage, about passion..

Riveting book. You cannot put it down once you start. It is the story of resilience amidst hopeless violence and chaos all around. It is the story of mindless brutality during world war II. It tells us that even in the hysteria few people in German army did preserve their humanity while others surrendered their reason and minds to megalomaniac. It also tells the story of the young blind girl in the France and her life in mindless violence around her. She is uprooted from her home when Nazis invade Paris. How she rebuilds her life in a new town along the shore. There she discovers her grand father's radio transmitter. Through that Radio transmitter she gets connected with young German soldier who is some kind of radio technology genius. Who is now using that talent to pinpoint enemy radio transmitters so his unit mate can go and kill them. He is tasked with finding the radio transmission emanating from the small town on the shore. Does he find her? Does he harm her? Good to read and find out. The novel will inculcate in reader's minds the importance of thinking independently and not getting influenced by group-think or ideology and thoughts of some supreme leader however charismatic he might be. It will also inculcate the importance of being skeptical and dangers of suspending one's disbelief. Importance of developing one's value system and humanity and sticking to it even if others around you are falling prey to propaganda.

Beautiful book, even better than the movie, as usual!

All the Light We Cannot See is a beautifully written and emotionally absorbing novel. I loved how Anthony Doerr brings Marie‑Laure’s world to life — the way her father builds miniature models of Paris so she can learn her way around is one of the most touching details in the book . Werner’s storyline is equally compelling, especially his fascination with radios and how a “broken radio fills his life with possibility”. Even though it’s set during World War II, the heart of the story is about kindness, resilience, and the small ways people try to be good to one another, even in terrible circumstances. It’s a gentle, moving read that builds slowly but rewards you with unforgettable moments. I can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize and became a worldwide bestseller.

Two fragile young people's destiny during WWII. Books and series about this period are necessary. It's our duty to remember so that it won't happen again. It's a very good book for teen-agers and adults who won't forget.

Good read for a 14yr old

mi libro que quería leer y resulto buenisismo.