Audiobook Review – All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Narrated by Zach Appelman (5/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 16 hours and 2 minutes
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio
Release Date: May 06, 2014
ASIN: B00IZGQ780
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed Audiobook from Library
Rating: 5/5 stars
“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 12, 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.”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on audiobook from my library.
Thoughts: This was an incredibly well done book about WWII. It wraps in intriguing characters (one who is blind and one who is a genius) and looks at how WWII affected these unique individuals and the people around them.
Previous to reading this book I had read Doerr’s “Cloud Cuckoo Land”, I enjoyed that more because there were a lot more fantastical elements to that story. I didn’t realize that this novel was a historical fiction about WWII and wasn’t super happy when I started reading it and found that out. I have read a ton of fictional books set in WWII era and am a bit burned out on that subject.
Still, this book won me over with its beautiful writing style and the way it focuses on making the war so personal and human. I also enjoyed the mysterious cursed diamond that was woven in and out of the story.
I think compared to other historical fiction books on WWII this book did some things exceptionally well. I like that we see part of the story from a young blind girl’s perspective; this gave a whole new twist to things. I also liked that the other character we hear from, Werner, is a young man who is a genius. For someone of his intelligence and compassion the war was painful in ways it wasn’t for others. This book is full of unique, amazing characters that fully communicate just how special and full of life humanity is.
I also thought this book did an awesome job of showing how reasonable things like the Hitler Youth and pride in Germany seemed at the beginning of the war. Additionally, as the story goes on it focuses both on how incredibly resilient humanity is and on how wars can leave deep and lasting scars.
I listened to this on audiobook and the narration was amazing. I did think that this was a bit harder to follow on audiobook because of the jumping around in time. We jump back and forth between when these characters are younger, to when they are growing up, to when they are young adults. It was hard to remember what time frame I was listening to in audiobook format….so just a caution. Part of that is because these chapters are incredibly long. This was a long book to listen to in general.
My Summary (5/5): Overall this was an amazing book that really humanizes some of the events of WWII. It focuses on the common people just trying to make it through the war on both the German and French side. If you are looking for a fictional read that emphasizes humanity and its resilience, this is an excellent one. This was incredible engaging and strangely beautiful to read. Yes, there are many disturbing parts to the story, but the focus is really on how humanity can preservere and support each other in small ways that make a big difference.
