All the Light We Cannot See

2015 Winner of the Pulitzer

What a way to start our 2016 Book Club reading.

We were really fortunate to have chosen All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

Here's a quick summary:

"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel 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.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. 

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, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge." 


http://www.anthonydoerr.com/books/all-the-light-we-cannot-see/

The book club's discussion today was very fruitful too. Of all attendees, only one hadn't read the novel...Most of the other ladies enjoyed it thoroughly.

The Author...Hope He's Busy Writing
More Fiction for ME!!!

Perfect Place for This Perfect Book

We agreed that is was a rich story that was cleverly woven together. The shifts in time were interesting, and the wide range of characters with different experiences and perspectives was fascinating.

The only lady that didn't enjoy it, indicated that she had heard many stories about traumas of WW2, and as such, didn't enjoy the story. She also mentioned that her reading of the story was often interrupted. In my opinion, it's hard to enjoy any novel that requires some attentive reading if you are constantly having to put it down and attend to other things.

Personally, I devoured this novel over the Christmas break and savoured the last 40-50 pages on the trip down to Playa Del Carmen in Mexico.