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

My new year's reading resolutions are to read 6 books in Italian, new Pulizer prize books and something else that I can't remember at the moment but is written in my diary for a total of 24 books. I thought that seemed doable and modest. Another, more recent resolution, is to take half an hour to write a book review for each book I read.  And try to make that review slightly better than ones I've written in the past. Here we go:

Book 1. Wait. Isn't it a shame that I have only read one book this year?! For librarian standards this is not acceptable at all!

Ok, again. Book 1: "All the Light We Cannot See" By Anthony Doerr

I'm a bit of an unbearable snob when it comes to historical fictions. I think that most of them (written by Americans) are written with a tone of fantasy imagining how people should have been living in a place where the author has usually never lived nor a culture the author has ever experienced. So how can an author know how to describe characters, food, culture? They can't! Take the scores of "Paris" themed World War 2 novels that are currently selling off book shelves and e-bookshelves at the moment. You have: "Paris: the Novel," 'The Paris Wife", ""The Paris Key", "The Paris Architect", "The Race for Paris", "Moonlight Over Paris." and dozens more. All written by authors who are not Parisian, are American and live in the US. I would rather those authors write something about where they are from. The US also has some fascinating history! How about "The Chippewa Wife" for a change? No? So, historical fiction, as adorable as they might describe the quaint streets and the fresh baked crunchy bread (it is also crunchy and delicious in Maryland) fails to attract me. Nevertheless, I pulled myself out of my snobby comfort zone of and decided to deign to read "All the Light We Cannot See" mostly because it won a Pulizer Prize. 

In this novel, set in Paris, Sant Malo (France), and Berlin, we see eliments of WW2 that shaped the lives of two out-of-luck tweens as they grew among bombs and war into teenagers. 

Marie-Laure is a blind French girl who is motherless and lives with her father in a cute (naturally) apartment in Paris. What apartment in Paris wouldn't be cute in a historical fiction? Ok, stop me. Her dad is an expert lock maker in the Natural History Museum. She rely's on her dad for everything since she is blind. And he is a really good instructive and protective father. He makes little model cities for her so that she can touch the model and get to know the city by hand before she has to walk it on foot. Good dad. 

Doerr makes a great move by creating a blind female protagonist. By choosing to blind his character he opens the opportunity to explore the senses of sound, touch, taste and intuition. When Marie-Laure  hears things she must interpret them: silence by people into fear, the stillness of birds, the shapes and contours of a mollusk shell. Doerr's strength is his poetic form of describing the senses of this blind girl as she goes from over-protected disabled daughter to good niece to resistance fighter to hiding in the attic without food for days while a Nazi sought to kill her. I really enjoyed the character of Marie-Laure  and would have liked to see more of her side of the story. 

The other protagonist is Werner, a very blond German orphan who is excellent at making radios in his little orphanage where he lives with his sister Jutta and other cold, hungry orphans. He is picked to go to a special school for very smart boys.

 And we already know how this will turn out. Werners character is non-violent yet obedient. He endures seeing his "friend" Frederick beaten dozens of times by fellow classmates and does nothing because he feels scared of getting punished himself. Frederick eventually gets brain trauma and needs to be spoon fed the rest of his life while he sits in a chair staring blankly. Werner goes off to the war and his job, at 16, is to find radio transmitters and have people using them killed. House after house he and his team find and kill people blindly accepting the fact that they are bad and enemies.

 Werner and most of his very young companions are described as "not knowing any better" that they were told to do this or they would be shot or beaten (Frederick being the example). Werner finally ends up stuck in a bombed hotel and for days the only thing he can hear is the sweet voice of Marie-Laure who is reading "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" via radio, risking her life. He is determined to save her. 

The main problem with historical fiction remains in this book. How possible is it? How possible are the characters? Marie-Laure is French, her whole family is French, town people French and they are all nice and polite! That is not French my friends. I highly doubt if a French author from Sant Malo wrote these same characters with the same story line that he would have made the family get along so sweetly and courteously well. French are tough and they love to banter. There was no bantering going on here. Mr. Doerr from Boise, Idaho might not have known how to make his characters properly banter. Or if he did, he might have thought it would detract from his story-line. In Napolitan (Italian) culture, at least, a good deal of family life is spent in the American terms of "screaming and arguing" which in their culture translates to "just discussing, chill, we need to yell otherwise life is boring." It can seem like you need to bring in a SWAT team of licensed family therapists to some but to them it is the most normal way to talk. Werner is also more possible out of the two characters. I often asked myself how was it that Nazi teens never said no to killing innocents? How? It is enraging to recall how thousands of boys who knew better followed orders to kill! Well, Doerr properly punishes Werner by sending him on a minefield at the end of the novel and blowing him up.

 I'm not sure that is the right way to end this character because so  many soldiers who committed murder survived and lived good long lives eating wurstel and sauerkraut, visiting Sicilian beaches and drinking beer as if the war was just a "bad job" that they weren't responsible for.

Lastly, I don't think I will be reading another historical fiction anytime soon but what I enjoyed the most of this novel was its artistic style and prose. I would definitely read another book by Doerr because of his artistic style. It is soothing and colorful and full of tastes and bursts and movement. Sailing through his novel was nice because he was able to use the element of suspense and combine it with descriptions of emotions and thought with great finesse. 

"All the Light We Cannot See" was better than my expectations and I enjoyed it for the most part. It also made me look for pictures of my grandparents who met in England thanks to WW2.

There are my grandparents on the right and Grandpa in his Air-force Uniform.

What a handsome couple! And I wonder what the kitten's name was?

 My grandmother was part Jewish and hid it most of her life (even operated her nose and changed her name because of the traumas of war). She rarely talked of the war and the few times she did her memories were dark and took her to a terrible place which ended with her saying in her calm British accent "It's about time for a cup of tea." I learned from her that when British ladies suddenly need a cup of tea, its time to change the subject. 

Now! Enough of that stuff. The good news is that my dad was born, thanks to the war bringing my grandparents together:

A good egg.

 And after that your's truly also came along and now I am here pleasing you all with my blog. 

Good night for today and stay warm on this chilly Valentine's Day!

20 Fahrenheit