Book Review: All The Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I was very impressed with Anthony Doerr's use of language. His description of the atmosphere of France and Germany before and during WWII was exceedingly vivid.

Telling the story primarily through the experiences of a German teenage boy, Werner, and a blind French teenage girl, Marie-Laure made for intriguing reading.

What I liked most about the Werner story, were the decisions he made to act or not act in certain situations. I also enjoyed Werner's process of learning there was so much more to the world than life in his small dirty coal town - even though it was not all positive.

Marie-Laure's story had great descriptions as they were filled primarily with the sense of touch, smell and hearing. Her listening to the sounds of her town after the initial bombing from birds to mollusks to dead whales was wonderful.

Unlike, Werner's story, hers had different perspectives from secondary characters like her father, uncle and von Rumpel. While this did not hurt the story, it made for a different reading in her chapters compared to Werner's.

There were time jumps every other chapter. Meaning the first chapter was 1944 while the second chapter was 1934 and the two stories ran forward from these two time points. I believe this was done to get some action into the beginning of the book, because while the 1934 years were mildly interesting, there was no sense of danger. It was a good choice.

Zach Appelman's reading on the Audiobook was superb.



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