During World War II, a blind girl from Paris, France, and a German boy training to become a soldier, only meet for brief moments but their stories carry depth and go on for 544 pages. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, is a moving work of fiction that has become one of my favorite novels, demonstrating an unlikely friendship that began with a broken radio. Doerr’s characters are written in a relatable way to attract a range of audiences, even if we don’t personally deal with the pressures or disabilities that the main characters do. The novel introduces many characters to both love and hate and a story to fall in love with.
When the story begins, it’s August of 1944, and World War 2 continues to rage through Europe. A young girl pulls free from the shutters a leaflet, bearing a message she cannot see, while a boy hides in the cellar of a fortress that protects a killer, clutching a single stretch of static.
Marie-Laure is a French girl growing up through a dangerous period, with only four of her five senses to help her, having lost her sight at the young age of six. Raised solely by her father, she learns to overcome the incredibly arduous challenge of living without her vision. She is described to be a tall, freckled girl with dark locks, quite often her freckles being described as a vital quality helping the young girl to piece together a picture in her head of what she could look like. Her father is a driving force in her life and encourages her not to let the loss of this sense to destroy her life. The author makes an effort to emphasize how she lives life and uses her other senses to assist her in her life. When she is forced out of her home in Paris due to the threat of German bombings, Marie-Laure and her father travel to the coastal town of St. Malo to live with her great-uncle Etienne. She must adapt to a new town, one she has never made her way around before. Unaware of her surroundings she must cautiously make her way into the unknown household, figuring out every turn and door.
Werner Pfennig is a German boy, raised in an orphanage with his younger sister, Jutta, by the caretaker of the children’s home. Werner is said to have shy hands, white, and a smile that simply melted others harsh walls. Other than knowing his father had died in the city’s coal mines, Werner knows very little about his parents. Raised during one of Germany’s worst economic periods, he owns barely any personal possessions, and when he comes to find an old, broken radio in an alley near the orphanage, he makes it his interest to repair it and make it work again. Werner grows to love the radios and physics, leading him to fix radios all over the neighborhood. Upon being set off to Hitler Youth, he befriends Fredrick, his bunkmate. Both Fredrick and Jutta present opportunities for Werner to step out of line and say something, but Werner is simply too scared and caring to cross the line. He argues with Jutta at one point stating the reason he cares so much is that of how dangerous it is.
As the years' progress, Werner keeps expanding his love for radios. After a series of brutal examinations, he is chosen to attend a highly selective school in Schulpforta, Hitler Youth. There, Werner excels in his physics and is chosen by his professor to help create a radio tracking device for the German army. Everything seems to be going as smoothly as it can during a war for Marie-Laure when things take a sharp turn, and her father goes missing on a trip to work. She receives a letter sometime in the future that informs her he is being kept in a German prison camp. Marie-Laure and her Great-uncle are then prompted to join in the resistance against the Nazis by broadcasting coded messages over the radio. After just a year at the school, sixteen-year-old Werner is sent to fight in the war, to track down rebel radio communication and Werner travels across Europe until his duties take him to the town of Saint-Malo, France. Marie-Laure comes to meet the German soldier named Werner Pfennig, and with his help, they escape the city from the bombings. After she reunites with her uncle outside the town, she gets back to Paris, and in her adult life she goes on to teach marine biology at the local university in Paris. She lives to see the turn of the century and enjoys her old age comfortably in her flat she had left behind so many years before. Werner, however, had ended his story years prior when he crossed the field and stepped on a landmine set by his army. He died in an eruption of the earth.
I sincerely recommend this novel for anyone interested in the blossoming story of two growing children during a time of total distress.
All The Light We Cannot See
By: Nicole Stetsyuk