BOOK - "ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE" by ANTHONY DOERR

"ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE" - I closed the book and said out loud "WOW. What a story".  

I love the 1-3 page chapters and that Anthony Doerr alternates chapters describing the life of 6-yr old Marie-Laure (recently blind) and then that of 7 yr-old Werner, beginning in 1934.  Werner, at 14, because of his skill with radio transmitters, was plucked from his orphanage for special schooling that will proudly lead him into the German army. Other than sharing that the book is set during the war, I won't tell you anymore, as I knew nothing going into the book and I really liked it that way.

There is something about books that are staged during World War II that attracts me.  Reading this one, I actually experienced something physical - a heavy heart trying to understand humanity; more appropriately stated "the lack thereof".  WHAT leads a man, a man with serious leadership skills, to convince a nation, to convince magnitudes of people that a certain segment of the population needs to be exterminated??  And the resulting "herd mentality" that follows his lead??  I guess my reaction occurred for one, because Anthony Doerr, as the writer, has such a wonderful talent for taking the reader into the story.  For instance, I could feel her aching feet as Marie-Laure walked for miles with her father away from Paris to escape the danger looming there.  WOW.  Again, WOW.

A few excerpts won't hurt - they don't tell you the story, but will show you the talent of Anthony Doerr:

Page 84

     "You know the greatest lesson of history?  It's that history is whatever the victors say it is.  That's the lesson.  Whoever wins, that's who decides the history.  We act in our own self-interest.  Of course we do.  Name me a person or a nation who does not.  The trick is figuring out where your interests are."

Page 436

     She can hear him standing out there.  Working out some cost-benefit analysis.  Then he turns and recedes down the street, dragging his fear like a cart behind him.

Page 437

     It seems to Werner that in the space between whatever has happened already and whatever is to come hovers an invisible borderland, the known on one side and the unknown on the other.

Page 456

     Von Rumpel's daughters were fat, roiling little babies, weren't they?  Both of them always dropping their rattles or rubber pacifiers and tangling themselves in blankets, why so tortured, little angels?  But they grew!  Despite all his absences.  And they could sing, especially Veronika.  Maybe they weren't going to be famous, but they could sing well enough to please a father.

Page 459

     Only two walls of the hotel stand, joined at the corner, bits of plaster attached to the inner wall.  Beyond it, houses display their interiors to the night. The rampart behind the hotel remains, though many of its embrasures along the top have been shattered.  The sea presents a barely audible wash on the other side.  Everything else is rubble and silence.

Page 461

     The sound makes him jerk backwards, and he knocks his head on the top of the wardrobe, and the candle falls......

     He watches the candle roll, its flame pointing up.  Why?  What curious principle demands that a candle flame taper always toward the sky?

Page 464

     Werner thinks about the men in the sunflowers and a hundred others: each lay dead in his hut or truck or bunker, wearing the look of someone who had caught the tune of a familiar song.  A crease between the eyes, a slackness to the mouth.  A look that said: So soon?  But doesn't it play for everybody too soon?

Page 469

     "When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave.  When my father left, people said I was brave.  But it is not bravery; I have no choice.  I wake up and live my life.  Don't you do the same?"

   

Joan