“Is it right to do something because everyone else
is doing it?” All the Light We Cannot
See takes a good look at this question and how it applied during one of the
darkest hours of our history, World War II.
If you were a German living in Hitler’s Reign, should you go along with
what was happening because it was what everyone else was doing and what was
expected? Where does your morality lie?
Sometimes you read a book that has such an amazing
story that it will stay with you always.
All The Light We Cannot See is one of these books. I had a hard time putting this book down and
stayed up too late Friday night to finish it up and have a good weep.
All the Light We Cannot See is set during WWII in
occupied France and also in Germany.
Marie Laure is a young blind girl growing up in France. Her father is the locksmith at the Natural
History Museum. After she goes blind,
her father builds her an elaborate model of their city and takes her out to
teach her how to navigate by herself.
She also learns how to read braille and loves Twenty Thousand Leagues
Under the Sea, although she only has part I.
After the war starts, the two flee Paris and live with Marie Laure’s
Great-Uncle Etienne who was shattered by WWI and lives in the seaside village
of Saint-Malo.
Just over two hundred miles away, Werner is a young
German boy growing up in an orphanage with his sister. Werner is mathematically
and mechanically gifted. He fears having
to enter the mine as all orphan boys have to do at a certain age. His father
died in a mine collapse and his body was never recovered. He repairs and makes
better an old radio, and he and his sister Jutta listen to a Frenchmen that has
a radio program about science for children along with classical music. Werner works to better himself and dreams of
becoming an engineer. After Werner fixes
the radio of an officer in mere minutes after others have tried and failed, he
finds himself tested and sent to a school at Schulpforta where he excels at
mathematics and electronics, but finds himself in a vast moral dilemma.
Major Reinhold von Rumpel is tasked with finding the
most precious jewels in Europe to add to Nazi Germany’s collection. He is obsessed with finding the elusive “Sea
of Flames” a cursed diamond that was housed in the Natural History Museum in
Paris. At the fall of Paris, three fakes
were made and two were sent off with the real thing from Paris. von Rumpel slowly tracks down all copies and
his search leads him to Saint-Malo.
This novel was excellent. The suspense was killing me at times. It was written in very short chapters that
switched the point of view between the three main characters. It also started with the Allies getting ready
to invade Saint-Malo and poor blind Marie Laure trapped alone in her house,
unable to read the flier telling all residents to leave. It flashed back in time to Marie Laure’s childhood
and then back to the future until the storylines collided at the end of the
novel. This format really kept up the
suspense of the novel. I couldn’t stop
thinking about Marie Laure being trapped and also Werner in also in a perilous
predicament at the same time.
The question of the morality of war and the
aftereffects was paramount to this novel.
There are two important side characters in Werner’s storyline that tell
the brutality of war. One is his friend
Frederick. Frederick is a dreamer and a
lover of birds, but this does not fit the mold for what their elite school
wants Frederick to be. The things that happen at this school are
horrifying. Volkheimer is a big brute of
an upperclassman that is nicknamed the “giant” and that most people fear. He does his job at school and out in the
field as a soldier as he has been directed.
But there is a soft spot in Volkheimer for Werner and for a life that
does not follow this downward trend in morality. Volkheimer through his words and actions
helps Werner to realize that not all people are bad and that there is a life
worth living for beyond the hell they are trapped in.
This book and The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah also
really brought home the fact for me the horrors of war for women. There is a section at the end about Werner’s
young sister Jutta and her fate in Germany as the Third Reich was dying and the
Russians were invading. It was not
pleasant.
The writing in this book was beautiful as was the
imagery. I loved it and would love to
see it as a movie.
I also enjoyed how the book didn’t end with the end
of the war, but flashed to the future to see how the main characters
faired. It seemed surreal to read about
everyone moving on to everyday jobs once they had been through such trauma. It was great portrayal of the war and of
Germans in particular. I liked how it
showed a three dimensional side to things and how all Germans weren’t evil moustache
twirling monsters or completely ignorant of the horrors, but many were trapped in
a moral quandary in between.
This book was the March selection for the FLICKS
Book and Movie Club. I was out of town
at a conference and the book didn’t come from the library in time. I hope that I can talk to some of my fellow
book club members about this book soon.
It was excellent.
Overall, All the Light We Cannot see is a great
suspense novel and a good look at the moral quandaries of war. It is a book not to be missed.
Book Source:
The Kewaunee Public Library – Thanks!
