A Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

When we think of light, most of us are probably thinking about the “visible light”, a type of electromagnetic radiation detectable by our eyes. However, the visible light is only a small portion in the range of light/electromagnetic spectrum. From radio waves to gamma waves, the majority of electromagnetic radiations in our universe are traveling at wavelengths our eyes cannot detect.

Therefore, most of the light in the universe are invisible to our eyes!

With this scientific fact in hand, American author Anthony Doerr wrote All the Light We Cannot See, a historical fiction novel set in World War II. This novel won the 2015 Pulitzer Price for Fiction. The book's title is a metaphorical suggestion that there are still countless stories buried in World War II. Stories of ordinary children, for examples, are also a kind of light that we cannot see.

In this book, the “light that we cannot see” come from the stories of two young people, stories of a french girl and a German boy.

The French girl's name was Marie-Laure. She lived in Paris with her father, who was a skillful locksmith working at the Museum of Natural History. Blindness stripped Marie-Lurie of her eyesight when she reached six years of age. When Marie-Laure was 12, Nazi Germany invaded France and took over Paris. The father-daughter duo fled from Paris to a city by the sea, a city called Saint-Malo. In this walled city lived Maurie-Laure's great uncle. In their baggage, Marie-Larue and her father carried a priceless but dangerous jewel.

The German boy's name was Werner, who, with his younger sister, grew up in an orphanage. Werner and his sister became spellbound by a radio they discovered. Werner, inspired by the marvels he felt for the radio, self-taught and learned extraordinary technical knowledge, ultimately winning him a place in Hitler Youth. From there, a path opened in front of Werner and brought his life to intertwine with Marie-Laure's own.

I like All the Light We Cannot See. This novel moved me deeply, because its struck me with a beautiful story and its powerful imagery. I have always wondered what it was like to live in a time period as turbulent as World War II. This book's superb worldbuilding took me into this era with dynamic descriptions for smell, sight, hearing and touch. Every sentence in this novel is wonderfully written, and I thought there is a lyrical quality to Anthony Doerr's prose.

This book is wonderfully written, but it is also very easy to read. Anthony Doerr made excellent use of short chapter. Every chapter in this book counts between two to five pages at the maximum. This format increases the pace of the book by reducing the downtime in the story. Furthermore, Anthony Doerr closed every chapter brilliantly. I was really impressed by how well the author ended every chapter.

I do, however, have a small complaint about the writings in this book. That is, I thought the author over-described certain scenes and sometimes he went into too much detail. In other words, I would describe some places in this book as “adjective galore”. Having said this, I am pretty sure my complaint is a matter of personal taste. What doesn't work for me often works for someone else. I believe there are many readers out there who appreciate detailed descriptions in the writings of a book.

Good characterization often accompanies a good story. All the Light We Cannot See has a very strong characterization. Although the book features two major characters, Marie-Laure and Werner, but through their eyes, the story also took readers to explore the lives of other people surrounding Marie-Laure and Werner, for those people too, are ordinary individuals whose stories were buried under the big event of World War II, the light we cannot see, but finally meeting the readers as Marie-Laure and Werner's stories are being told.

My favorite aspect of this book is that every character feels realistic and natural. In All the Light We Cannot See, no character bears qualities of caricatures such as a hero or a villain. The author carefully depicted each character and exploring the circumstances they were in, and the choices they made, as real humans living in a hard time. The characters in this book showed depth because as readers, we understand how these stories could have been our own, if we had been placed under the same circumstances as them.

At this point, I need to mention that All the Light We Cannot See uses an unusual style of exposition to narrate its story, one that may take time for some readers to become familiar with. This book follows the stories of Marie-Laure and Werner, two individuals who only shared commonalities because their lives were impacted by the same major events. Their stories, however, do not unfold chronologically in this book. In fact, the narratives tend to jump back and forth on the time line. For example, one section of the book may took place in 1944, but the next section would suddenly flash back to 1941. Having said this, when I was reading this book, I did not loose track of the story because it is easy to follow. But I think would-be readers should be aware of it.

The merit for All the Light We Cannot See does not end at the good writings and its memorable characters. Personally, I think the true merit for this book is how its metaphorical meaning calls me to reflect on the way I interact with my surrounding. Perhaps I spent too much of my time focusing on only a small portion of what is out there; people and things that I may have caught glimpses of but have not seen.

All the Light We cannot See is a very good novel. I highly recommend this book.