Marie-Laure Leblanc: A blind girl lives with her father in Paris, near the Museum of Natural History where he works.
Werner Pfennig: An orphan, enchanted by a makeshift radio, grows up in a mining town in Germany.
Anthony Doerr's fascinating novel about these two young people in Nazi Germany and France during World War II is unforgettable. From the blurb on the book's back cover: "Marie-Laure and Werner, from warring countries, both having lost many of the people they loved, come together in Saint-Malo, as Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another."
Here's the opening:
7 August 1944
Leaflets
At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, they say. Depart immediately to open country.
Teaser from Page 156 in trade paperback copy:
He pulls up a ring in the center of the floor. Beneath a hatch waits a square hole out of which washes a damp, frightening smell. "One step down, hurry now."
Synopsis:
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller 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 in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. 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, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
Pulitzer Prize winning novel.
Genre: Historical Fiction
Amazon Link: All The Light We Cannot See
Book Length: 545 Pages
Author Website: Anthony Doerr
NOTE: I downloaded this ebook from the library.
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