ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE (BOOK REVIEW)

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
Anthony Doerr
Scribner / May 2014

Are you not so into historical book? If you said yes, you need to check out this one. This fiction novel is absolutely magnificent and stunning. It does have a quite number of pages (530 pages), but trust me once you read, all you want to do is just keep reading it pages by pages.  The story tells about a girl named Marie-Laure who lives with her father in Paris. They live nearby the Museum of Natural History where her father works as master of all locks. Marie-Laure goes blind by the age of six, and afterwards her father builds her a kind of city model of their neighborhoods with quite details so that she can try to memorize it by touching every roads on it with her fingers.

In the year of 1940 when the Nazis invade France, Marie-Laure and her father go to Saint Malo to escape in her great-uncle Etienne’s mansion. People known Etienne as a man who still suffering from shock after the War. In the story, Marie-Laure’s father has been entrusted to keep the priceless blue diamond called Sea of Flames which people believe that the keeper would get eternal life and curses all he loves with such misfortune. This diamond also should be keep out of Germans. Unfortunately, during they stay in Etienne’s, her father is arrested by German and dissapears. He leaves Marie-Laure with Etienne and his maid. Afterwards, Germans start to send their people to do such a treasure hunt to find the blue diamond.

While far away in Germany, there is an orphan child named Werner Pfennig who lives in a coal-mining town called Zollferein along with his sister Jutta. He is such a brilliant boy I must say. Werner and Jutta once find a broken short-wave radio behind the Children’s Home where they live, then he fixes it. Werner is such a brillian boy I must say. He gets into an elite military school named Hitler Youth.

As the time goes by, Werner travels to France during the war and finally arrives in Saint-Malo, where he first meets Marie-Laure. A little love story of Werner and Marie-Laure in the middle of the war seems quite romantic.

The way Doerr writes really fantastic. You may easily imagine how does it look like living the life in World War II as kids and how would they deal with it. If you a kind of person that really into literature and beautiful prose, I suggest you to read this book. Don’t you worry, Son, each chapter only consists of two pages max. You will be amazed with the lyrical words that Mr. Doerr writes as he invites us to soak in every detail of the chapters. Yet, you basically should be aware with movement of each chapters because they are mostly jump back and forth. Be ready for a wonderful piece of work of all time! (Astri)