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All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel by [Anthony Doerr]

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Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Anthony Doerr (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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*Winner of the Pulitzer Prize* A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book* A National Book Award Finalist*

From Anthony Doerr, the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning author of Cloud Cuckoo Land, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

*Soon to be a Netflix limited series from the producers of Stranger Things*

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

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Scribner
Publication date

May 6, 2014
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Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.
Highlighted by 12,304 Kindle readers
“Your problem, Werner,” says Frederick, “is that you still believe you own your life.”
Highlighted by 11,528 Kindle readers
Walk the paths of logic. Every outcome has its cause, and every predicament has its solution. Every lock its key.
Highlighted by 10,644 Kindle readers
Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.
Highlighted by 6,579 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Mesmerizing… Exquisite… The written equivalent of a Botticelli or a Michelangelo.” –The Portland Oregonian

“Stunning… Uplifting… Not to be missed.” –Entertainment Weekly

“Hauntingly beautiful.” –The New York Times

“Each and every person in this finely spun assemblage is distinct and true.” –USA Today

“Intertwines secret radio broadcasts, a cursed diamond, a soldier’s deepest doubts into a richly compelling package… Irresistible.” –People

“Gorgeous… Moves with the pace of a thriller.” –San Francisco Chronicle

“Enthrallingly told, beautifully written.” —Amanda Vaill, The Washington Post

“Dazzling . . . Startlingly fresh.” —John Freeman, The Boston Globe

“Intricate . . . A meditation on fate, free will, and the way that, in wartime, small choices can have vast consequences.” —The New Yorker

“Brims with scrupulous reverence for all forms of life. The invisible light of the title shines long after the last page.” —Tricia Springstubb, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Anthony Doerr writes beautifully. . . . A tour de force.” —Elizabeth Reid, Deseret News

“Anthony Doerr again takes language beyond mortal limits.” —Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

“Perfectly captured . . . Doerr writes sentences that are clear-eyed, taut, sweetly lyrical.” —Josh Cook, Minneapolis StarTribune

“A beautiful, expansive tale . . . Ambitious and majestic.” —Steph Cha, Los Angeles Times

“Doerr is an exquisite stylist; his talents are on full display.” —Alan Cheuse, NPR

“The craftsmanship of Doerr’s book is rooted in his ability to inhabit the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner.” —Steve Novak, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Doerr deftly guides All the Light We Cannot See toward the day Werner’s and Marie-Laure’s lives intersect during the bombing of Saint-Malo in what may be his best work to date.” —Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor

“To open a book by Anthony Doerr is to open a door on humanity. . . . His sentences shimmer. . . . His paragraphs are luminous with bright, sparkling beauty.” —Martha Anne Toll, Washington Independent Review of Books

“Endlessly bold and equally delicate . . . An intricate miracle of invention, narrative verve, and deep research lightly held, but above all a miracle of humanity . . . Anthony Doerr’s novel celebrates—and also accomplishes—what only the finest art can: the power to create, reveal, and augment experience in all its horror and wonder, heartbreak and rapture.” —Shelf Awareness

“Intricately structured . . . All the Light We Cannot See is a work of art and of preservation.” —Jane Ciabattari, BBC

“Magnificent.” —Carmen Callil, The Guardian (UK)

“The whole enthralls.” —Good Housekeeping

“A revelation.” —Michael Magras, Bookreporter.com

“Doerr conjures up a vibrating, crackling world. . . . Intricately, beautifully crafted.” —Rebecca Kelley, Bustle.com

“There is so much in this book. It is difficult to convey the complexity, the detail, the beauty, and the brutality of this simple story.” —Carole O’Brien, Aspen Daily News

“Beautifully written . . . Soulful and addictive.” —Chris Stuckenschneider, The Missourian

“A novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned, Doerr’s magnificently drawn story seems at once spacious and tightly composed. . . . Doerr masterfully and knowledgeably re-creates the deprived civilian conditions of war-torn France and the strictly controlled lives of the military occupiers.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“If a book’s success can be measured by its ability to move readers and the number of memorable characters it has, Story Prize–winner Doerr’s novel triumphs on both counts. Along the way, he convinces readers that new stories can still be told about this well-trod period, and that war—despite its desperation, cruelty, and harrowing moral choices—cannot negate the pleasures of the world.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“This novel has the physical and emotional heft of a masterpiece. . . . It presents two characters so interesting and sympathetic that readers will keep turning the pages hoping for an impossibly happy ending. . . . Highly recommended for fans of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.” —Evelyn Beck, Library Journal (starred review)

About the Author

Anthony Doerr is the author of Cloud Cuckoo Land, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and All the Light We Cannot See, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Carnegie Medal, the Alex Award, and a #1 New York Times bestseller. He is also the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won five O. Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons.

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, May 2014: Does the world need yet another novel about WWII? It does when the novel is as inventive and beautiful as this one by Anthony Doerr. In fact, All the Light We Cannot See--while set mostly in Germany and France before and during the war--is not really a “war novel”. Yes, there is fear and fighting and disappearance and death, but the author’s focus is on the interior lives of his two characters. Marie Laure is a blind 14-year-old French girl who flees to the countryside when her father disappears from Nazi-occupied Paris. Werner is a gadget-obsessed German orphan whose skills admit him to a brutal branch of Hitler Youth. Never mind that their paths don’t cross until very late in the novel, this is not a book you read for plot (although there is a wonderful, mysterious subplot about a stolen gem). This is a book you read for the beauty of Doerr’s writing-- “Abyss in her gut, desert in her throat, Marie-Laure takes one of the cans of food…”--and for the way he understands and cherishes the magical obsessions of childhood. Marie Laure and Werner are never quaint or twee. Instead they are powerful examples of the way average people in trying times must decide daily between morality and survival. --Sara Nelson

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

All the Light We Cannot See

Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle

Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a tall and freckled six-year-old in Paris with rapidly deteriorating eyesight when her father sends her on a children’s tour of the museum where he works. The guide is a hunchbacked old warder hardly taller than a child himself. He raps the tip of his cane against the floor for attention, then leads his dozen charges across the gardens to the galleries.

The children watch engineers use pulleys to lift a fossilized dinosaur femur. They see a stuffed giraffe in a closet, patches of hide wearing off its back. They peer into taxidermists’ drawers full of feathers and talons and glass eyeballs; they flip through two-hundred-year-old herbarium sheets bedecked with orchids and daisies and herbs.

Eventually they climb sixteen steps into the Gallery of Mineralogy. The guide shows them agate from Brazil and violet amethysts and a meteorite on a pedestal that he claims is as ancient as the solar system itself. Then he leads them single file down two twisting staircases and along several corridors and stops outside an iron door with a single keyhole. “End of tour,” he says.

A girl says, “But what’s through there?”

“Behind this door is another locked door, slightly smaller.”

“And what’s behind that?”

“A third locked door, smaller yet.”

“What’s behind that?”

“A fourth door, and a fifth, on and on until you reach a thirteenth, a little locked door no bigger than a shoe.”

The children lean forward. “And then?”

“Behind the thirteenth door”—the guide flourishes one of his impossibly wrinkled hands—“is the Sea of Flames.”

Puzzlement. Fidgeting.

“Come now. You’ve never heard of the Sea of Flames?”

The children shake their heads. Marie-Laure squints up at the naked bulbs strung in three-yard intervals along the ceiling; each sets a rainbow-colored halo rotating in her vision.

The guide hangs his cane on his wrist and rubs his hands together. “It’s a long story. Do you want to hear a long story?”

They nod.

He clears his throat. “Centuries ago, in the place we now call Borneo, a prince plucked a blue stone from a dry riverbed because he thought it was pretty. But on the way back to his palace, the prince was attacked by men on horseback and stabbed in the heart.”

“Stabbed in the heart?”

“Is this true?”

A boy says, “Hush.”

“The thieves stole his rings, his horse, everything. But because the little blue stone was clenched in his fist, they did not discover it. And the dying prince managed to crawl home. Then he fell unconscious for ten days. On the tenth day, to the amazement of his nurses, he sat up, opened his hand, and there was the stone.

“The sultan’s doctors said it was a miracle, that the prince never should have survived such a violent wound. The nurses said the stone must have healing powers. The sultan’s jewelers said something else: they said the stone was the largest raw diamond anyone had ever seen. Their most gifted stonecutter spent eighty days faceting it, and when he was done, it was a brilliant blue, the blue of tropical seas, but it had a touch of red at its center, like flames inside a drop of water. The sultan had the diamond fitted into a crown for the prince, and it was said that when the young prince sat on his throne and the sun hit him just so, he became so dazzling that visitors could not distinguish his figure from light itself.”

“Are you sure this is true?” asks a girl.

“Hush,” says the boy.

“The stone came to be known as the Sea of Flames. Some believed the prince was a deity, that as long as he kept the stone, he could not be killed. But something strange began to happen: the longer the prince wore his crown, the worse his luck became. In a month, he lost a brother to drowning and a second brother to snakebite. Within six months, his father died of disease. To make matters even worse, the sultan’s scouts announced that a great army was gathering in the east.

“The prince called together his father’s advisers. All said he should prepare for war, all but one, a priest, who said he’d had a dream. In the dream the Goddess of the Earth told him she’d made the Sea of Flames as a gift for her lover, the God of the Sea, and was sending the jewel to him through the river. But when the river dried up, and the prince plucked it out, the goddess became enraged. She cursed the stone and whoever kept it.”

Every child leans forward, Marie-Laure along with them.

“The curse was this: the keeper of the stone would live forever, but so long as he kept it, misfortunes would fall on all those he loved one after another in unending rain.”

“Live forever?”

“But if the keeper threw the diamond into the sea, thereby delivering it to its rightful recipient, the goddess would lift the curse. So the prince, now sultan, thought for three days and three nights and finally decided to keep the stone. It had saved his life; he believed it made him indestructible. He had the tongue cut out of the priest’s mouth.”

“Ouch,” says the youngest boy.

“Big mistake,” says the tallest girl.

“The invaders came,” says the warder, “and destroyed the palace, and killed everyone they found, and the prince was never seen again, and for two hundred years no one heard any more about the Sea of Flames. Some said the stone was recut into many smaller stones; others said the prince still carried the stone, that he was in Japan or Persia, that he was a humble farmer, that he never seemed to grow old.

“And so the stone fell out of history. Until one day, when a French diamond trader, during a trip to the Golconda Mines in India, was shown a massive pear-cut diamond. One hundred and thirty-three carats. Near-perfect clarity. As big as a pigeon’s egg, he wrote, and as blue as the sea, but with a flare of red at its core. He made a casting of the stone and sent it to a gem-crazy duke in Lorraine, warning him of the rumors of a curse. But the duke wanted the diamond very badly. So the trader brought it to Europe, and the duke fitted it into the end of a walking stick and carried it everywhere.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Within a month, the duchess contracted a throat disease. Two of their favorite servants fell off the roof and broke their necks. Then the duke’s only son died in a riding accident. Though everyone said the duke himself had never looked better, he became afraid to go out, afraid to accept visitors. Eventually he was so convinced that his stone was the accursed Sea of Flames that he asked the king to shut it up in his museum on the conditions that it be locked deep inside a specially built vault and the vault not be opened for two hundred years.”

“And?”

“And one hundred and ninety-six years have passed.”

All the children remain quiet a moment. Several do math on their fingers. Then they raise their hands as one. “Can we see it?”

“No.”

“Not even open the first door?”

“No.”

“Have you seen it?”

“I have not.”

“So how do you know it’s really there?”

“You have to believe the story.”

“How much is it worth, Monsieur? Could it buy the Eiffel Tower?”

“A diamond that large and rare could in all likelihood buy five Eiffel Towers.”

Gasps.

“Are all those doors to keep thieves from getting in?”

“Maybe,” the guide says, and winks, “they’re there to keep the curse from getting out.”

The children fall quiet. Two or three take a step back.

Marie-Laure takes off her eyeglasses, and the world goes shapeless. “Why not,” she asks, “just take the diamond and throw it into the sea?”

The warder looks at her. The other children look at her. “When is the last time,” one of the older boys says, “you saw someone throw five Eiffel Towers into the sea?”

There is laughter. Marie-Laure frowns. It is just an iron door with a brass keyhole.

The tour ends and the children disperse and Marie-Laure is reinstalled in the Grand Gallery with her father. He straightens her glasses on her nose and plucks a leaf from her hair. “Did you have fun, ma chérie?”

A little brown house sparrow swoops out of the rafters and lands on the tiles in front of her. Marie-Laure holds out an open palm. The sparrow tilts his head, considering. Then it flaps away.

One month later she is blind. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Artist

Anthony Doerr --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* A novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned, Doerr’s magnificently drawn story seems at once spacious and tightly composed. It rests, historically, during the occupation of France during WWII, but brief chapters told in alternating voices give the overall—and long—narrative a swift movement through time and events. We have two main characters, each one on opposite sides in the conflagration that is destroying Europe. Marie-Louise is a sightless girl who lived with her father in Paris before the occupation; he was a master locksmith for the Museum of Natural History. When German forces necessitate abandonment of the city, Marie-Louise’s father, taking with him the museum’s greatest treasure, removes himself and his daughter and eventually arrives at his uncle’s house in the coastal city of Saint-Malo. Young German soldier Werner is sent to Saint-Malo to track Resistance activity there, and eventually, and inevitably, Marie-Louise’s and Werner’s paths cross. It is through their individual and intertwined tales that Doerr masterfully and knowledgeably re-creates the deprived civilian conditions of war-torn France and the strictly controlled lives of the military occupiers.High-Demand Backstory: A multipronged marketing campaign will make the author’s many fans aware of his newest book, and extensive review coverage is bound to enlist many new fans. --Brad Hooper --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00DPM7TIG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; Reprint edition (May 6, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 6, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 10456 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 552 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #2,244 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #5 in Historical German Fiction
- #7 in Military Historical Fiction
- #8 in Historical French Fiction

Customer Reviews:
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Anthony Doerr

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Anthony Doerr has won numerous prizes for his fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Carnegie Medal. His novel, 'All the Light We Cannot See,' was a #1 New York Times Bestseller and his new novel, 'Cloud Cuckoo Land,' published in September of 2021, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Learn more at www.anthonydoerr.com.

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1 star		2%

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Jason Cornelius

There's no doubt this is a fantastic book. Beautifully written

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2018

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Tough to review. There's no doubt this is a fantastic book. Beautifully written, palpable characters, fantastic backdrop. I can see why it's recieved so many accolades.
But all that said, I didn't find it enjoyable to read.
It took a while to figure out why. Even while reading it I'm thinking to myself "This is so good", but at the same time wondering why I'm bored and looking forward to the next book.
Finally I think I nailed it. Nothing really happens. It's all set in amongst the background of a lot happening, but other than hearing about it, there's not much that really goes on with the characters that so much time has been spent making us love.
This feels like all the parts of a fantastic book that happen BETWEEN the major plot points.
I spent the majority of this book waiting for something to happen, and when it doesn't it feels like there no payoff for the time invested in these characters.
Maybe this is what literary fiction is about. I can see why people may like it. It's life through the eyes of others.
But books are a form of entertainment. This wasn't entertaining to me, and I couldn't wait to start a new book.

1,381 people found this helpful

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Marcia R. Johnston

Reading this novel will make you a better writer

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2018

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Want to write masterfully? Read masterful writing. For example, open a Doerr—something written by Anthony Doerr, that is. His "All the Light We Cannot See" is the opposite of a page turner. What would you call that … a page lingerer, maybe? As I read this story, over and over I set aside my curiosity about what happens next to slow down, reread, and savor the language.

For one thing, Doerr’s verbs nail the action in arresting ways. Bombers “shed” altitude. Pigeons “cataract” down a cathedral spire and “wheel out” over the sea. Teacups “drift” off shelves, and paintings “slip” off nails. Dread “trundles” up from the blind girl’s gut. Car horns “bleat.” Snowflakes “tick and patter” through trees.

This prose begs to be read aloud or at least heard by your inner ear. Consider these snippets:

“…the low moonlit lumps of islands ranged along the horizon.” (Oh, the consonance—all those lush l’s, not to mention the two soft m’s woven in: “moonlit lumps”!)

“…the last unevacuated townspeople wake, groan, sigh. Spinsters, prostitutes, men over sixty. Procrastinators, collaborators, disbelievers, drunks. Nuns of every order. The poor. The stubborn. The blind.” (Oh, the rhythm—you can practically see the conductor’s baton twitching to the beat of “wake, groan, sigh.” My toe is tapping at the next line: “Spinsters, prostitutes, men over sixty.” I’m clapping along as if to a jumprope chant by the time we get to “Procrastinators, collaborators, disbelievers, drunks. Nuns of very order…”)

”…each storm drain, park bench, and hydrant…” (Each DAAH-dum, DAAH-dum, and DA-dum!)

“Cold fog hangs in the budding trees.” (Each of the first three words—“Cold” and “fog” and “hangs”—takes a full beat, slowing the sentence down, defying forward movement. It’s as if these three words themselves are hanging there—BOM BOM BOM—in the budding trees.)

No wonder this novel took me so long to read. I read it for the poetry.

Whether or not you read for this singular kind of pleasure, you’ll find this story a timely reminder of humanity during a time of inhumanity.

And you’ll write more masterfully for reading it.

590 people found this helpful

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heatherlovess

First half is good. Second half is absolutely horrible.

Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2018

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I do not understand why people love this book. Yes, it starts out good, the author’s writing is beautiful at first and he develops the characters wonderfully. But then. The book drags on and on and on and gets super dark and depressing. I forced myself to read through it, thinking things will turn around in the end. But nope. The end is horrible. Ugh I just wasted a week of my life I can’t get back.

354 people found this helpful

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Jamie Parker

Slowwwww

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2018

Verified Purchase

I was encouraged by several friends who loved this book to give it a read. I’m in 100 pages and it’s hitting the donate pile. Slow read. Short segments are nice though so I don’t feel rushed to finish a chapter. Sadly can’t get into this book, I had very high hopes for it.

278 people found this helpful

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bjo

A must read!

Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2017

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I cannot recommend this book highly enough! It has quickly become one of my absolute favorite books...it's truly captivating and well written.

Call me old-fashioned, but I used to love browsing bookstores in person, and the rise of the internet has made it all too easy to find and purchase subpar (albeit popular) books. There are so many entertainment alternatives that many truly great stories go under the radar...until it's announced that they'll be made into a movie (in fact, many read like screenplays, as if the author anticipates that's where the paycheck is). And yes, the characters and the interwoven storyline and the dramatic WWII backdrop could make for a blockbuster hit.

But. This is a book you really should read, and relish. (I read this on my kindle and hid the progress percentage because I didn't want it to end.) Doerr writes with absolutely beautiful imagery. It's emotional and vivid and earnest. A wonderful reminder that books were written to provide a unique insight into how others think, and feel, and live, and love.

262 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Lady Vibart

A page turning, brilliantly sensitive story of courage, love and the cruelty of war, studded with characters we all recognise!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 16, 2018

Verified Purchase

I came across this novel accidentally and it's one of the most moving and exciting I've read for a long time. The story is set in WW2 Europe, mainly France and Germany but also Russia etc. It tells the story of a young girl, Marie Laure who went blind as a child and lives in Paris with her father, Daniel Leblanc, a gifted locksmith and miniaturist who works at a prestigious museum as keeper of the keys, and makes models of the city and its streets to teach his daughter how to find her way around the city. They live for each other. At the same time, we meet little Werner Pffenig, and orphan who lives in an orphanage in Germany with his sister, Jutta, under the maternal eye of Elena, the French matron. They listen to broadcasts in French that speak of the earth’s wonders, of brilliant birds, flowers and stars , on a recycled radio that Werner has managed to assemble from street detritus. That is his great skill, working with all things electrical, especially radio transmitters. His future is mapped out for him, he will be sent down the mines to help the Fatherland, the Fuhrer, etc - the same mines that killed his father. But life had other plans for him. The story weaves backwards and forwards with a rich caste of characters both simple and complex, evil or kind, - there are greedy traitors, cruel psychopaths, heroes and heroines on both sides all told with detail that makes the scenes come alive. Does the silken voiced broadcaster really live in a house with 1,000 rooms? And how is he linked to The Whelk? Who is the giant Werner meets at training school who terrifies all the boys by his presence? What must Marie Laura find in ‘the house ‘ at Etienne’s - the last command her father gave her before he left for the museum? What have Captain Nemo and The young girl broadcasting on a forbidden radio have to do with the psychotic Nazi hunting relentlessly for a priceless treasure as his life ebbs away? So many questions all slowly and gradually linking up. The suspense is heightened - then comes the calm only to be jerked back onto a knife edge! We witness mindless cruelty and incredible kindness and love, and as the bombs blitz Paris under German control, then St. Malo as the Allies close in, the different threads, the pathos, the horror and yet courage, hope and survival, sometimes purely physical since minds have been lost, is so gripping, so moving I couldn't put the book down. You keep hoping that the various characters will be found - will return somehow, and the wounds, both physical and emotional will be able to heal. It's very sensively written, with characters that you feel you've shared sunny mornings and untold terrors with. A great novel to remind us all of the horror and inhumanity of war, and yet the indomitability and also the kindness that humans are capable of. A novel for baby boomers and millennials alike. Highly recommended.

150 people found this helpful

Ashwini A.

An absolute must-read

Reviewed in India on May 16, 2018

Verified Purchase

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?

182 people found this helpful

Kaffmatt

Thought Provoking Account Of The Occupation of France in WW2

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2018

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This evolved into a powerful account of the effects of WW2 on two innocent children during the occupation of France. I found the book difficult to ‘get into’ at the beginning. This was down to the author’s writing style, the short chapters and the rather confusing jumps backwards and forwards between the 1930s and 1944.
Marie Laure is an 11 yrs old blind girl, who is taken from Paris to St Malo, by her father for safety. Werner is an 11 yrs old German boy, who is a genius with technology i e old fashioned radios of the era. He attends an elite school for the German Ideal. Werner progresses to be an important part of discovering illegal radios used by the Resistance in the St Malo area.
Some very interesting facts are given and there’s obviously a lot going on; mostly about the sadness, hardship and devastating consequences of war. Paths cross along the way. Various plot threads interact. There are some heroic pleasing characters and equally some distasteful cruel individuals.
Would recommend but advise sticking with the unusual style.

57 people found this helpful

M. Faulkner

Steel yourself, this one really tugs at the heart strings.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 18, 2016

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This is a simply beautiful book. It is however, deceptively long, if you are reading electronically you will plough through 10 or 15 chapters (they are extremely short) and think you are flying through only to discover you have only moved on 3 or 4%. But the story, the characters depth and fullness and the descriptions of times and places are just perfect. It is one of those books that gives you a pain in your chest and brings tears springing to your eyes even when you think you are inured to what you may already suspect is coming.

109 people found this helpful

Mr. Tempo

Kids might like it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 18, 2020

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Once upon a time... well almost. Starts with a magic diamond with red fire that is trying to get back to the sea. Alas it is found in a river by a Prince or some other title who is riding his horse across. Gets made into a jewel and brings back luck to everyone who owns it. Continues like this with a blind French girl and a German soldier in 1945 and end of WW2. French girl's farther is a museum custodian and the jewel now resides behind 13 locked doors like Russian dolls. Guess the girl and soldier meet up … could not take any more.

Terrible recommendation but on holiday and nothing to read and only the Kindle with me: should have got a Sample.

13 people found this helpful

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