An amazing book.
The French Revolution. Modern-day Brooklyn. Time Travel. Loss. Grief. Angst. Music history. Resolution. Redemption.
Jennifer Donnelly is a superb writer and researcher. She takes writing, as an art form, to its highest level. Her characters are complex and compelling; she brings stark and vivid reality to dusty, ambiguous history.
If only the French Revolution and any war before or after could have really changed the world. This Revolution insists we can only change ourselves.
All the Light We Cannot See
"A novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned." – Booklist
"This jewel of a story is put together like a vintage timepiece, its many threads coming together so perfectly. Doerr’s writing and imagery are stunning. It’s been a while since a novel had me under its spell in this fashion. The story still lives on in my head." –Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone.
"All the Light We Cannot See is a dazzling, epic work of fiction. Anthony Doerr writes beautifully about the mythic and the intimate, about snails on beaches and armies on the move, about fate and love and history and those breathless, unbearable moments when they all come crashing together." –Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins.
Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.
In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.
Doerr’s gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a finalist for the 2104 National Book Award, an international bestseller, the 2014 Book of the Year at Hudson Booksellers, the #2 book of 2014 at Amazon.com, a LibraryReads Favorite of Favorites, a best book of 2014 at the Washington Post, and a #1 Indie Next pick, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work.
Anthony Doerr sees the world as a scientist, but feels it as a poet. He knows about everything—radios, diamonds, mollusks, birds, flowers, locks, guns—but he also writes a line so beautiful, creates an image or scene so haunting, it makes you think forever differently about the big things—love, fear, cruelty, kindness, the countless facets of the human heart. Wildly suspenseful, structurally daring, rich in detail and soul, Doerr’s new novel is that novel, the one you savor, and ponder, and happily lose sleep over, then go around urging all your friends to read—now. –JR Moehringer, author of The Tender Bar
The room started spinning around, and Lucien became so disoriented that he couldn't keep his balance. He sat on the floor and thought he was going to vomit.
"Christ, what a day!" He muttered.
Normally , Lucien would do anything to get a job, no matter how despicable...
This, however, was a different matter altogether. Sure, he was broke, but were twelve thousand francs and a guaranteed commission worth the risk of dying? The money wouldn't help him if he was dead. Actually, it wasn't the dying part that troubled him it was the torture by the Gestapo that would precede the dying. Lucien had heard on good authority what the Germans did to those who wouldn't cooperate--days of barbaric treatment before death, or if the Gestapo was feeling merciful, which was a rarity, internment in a camp.
Charles Belfoure
Chaper 3, pg. 19
Both CA and I have almost overdone on WWII, Holocaust, French Resistance... reading in the past few years. This is such a fresh and unique perspective. I liked it better the further I got into it--possibly as Lucien develops more humanity.
"Breathtakingly suspenseful and beautifully written, The Historian is the story of a young woman plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her family's past connect to an inconceivable evil: the dark fifteenth-century reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for the truth becomes an adventure of monumental proportions, taking us from monasteries and dusty libraries to the capitals of Eastern Europe - in a feat of storytelling so rich, so hypnotic, so exciting that it has enthralled readers around the world."
"Never was a ghost story so casually erudite, nor a historical travelogue such gripping entertainment."
---New York Magazine
Skipping this book would have been such a great loss. I learned so much middle-eastern European / North African / Mediterranean history, and am fascinated to read and research more. We've traveled some in Hungary, France, The Carpathians... And, one tends to latch onto and be mesmerized by the somewhat familiar.
I figured out that Svaty Jur, Slovakia--near our son's family's home until recently-- is named for the very same St. George (Svety Georgi) who plays a pivotal role in the searches involved. It's the old Six Degrees (or less) of Separation.
