All the Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See

Author	Anthony Doerr
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Historical
Published	2014 (Scribner)
Media type	Print (hardback)
Pages	544
ISBN	978-1-4767-4658-6
OCLC	852226410

All the Light We Cannot See is a novel written by American author Anthony Doerr, published by Scribner on May 6, 2014. It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Plot

Set in occupied France during World War II, the novel centers on a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths eventually cross.

In 1934, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is the daughter of a widowed master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris whom she often accompanies to work. Marie suffered from rapidly deteriorating eyesight before becoming fully blind due to cataracts at the age of 6. Her father promises that he will always be there for her and creates a wooden scale-model of their neighborhood in Paris for her to memorize by touch so that she is able to navigate by herself. He also keeps her mind sharp by hiding birthday gifts in intricate puzzle boxes that he carves. Marie learns to read Braille and her father gives her new novels in Braille to read. She becomes entranced by the imagined worlds like those that she explores in her edition of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

The museum where Marie-Laure's father works as a locksmith is rumored to house an exquisite blue diamond of immeasurable value, with beautiful dancing "red flames" at its center: According to legend, however, the priceless diamond is cursed: whoever keeps the "Sea of Flames" cannot die but their loved ones will be stricken with unending misfortunes.

Meanwhile, in Germany, 8-year-old Werner Pfennig is an orphan in the coal-mining town of Zollverein. He and his sister Jutta find a broken short-wave radio behind the Children’s Home where they live. Werner manages to repair the radio and his natural skill for circuitry becomes apparent. He and Jutta tune in and listen to a variety of programs, including a regular broadcast from France hosted by an older gentleman who shares stories about the world of science, skillfully framed so that even younger listeners can understand.

When the Nazis invade France in 1940, Marie-Laure and her father flee from Paris to the coastal town of Saint-Malo to take refuge with her great-uncle Etienne, a recluse suffering shell-shock from the Great War. Unbeknownst to Marie-Laure, her father has been entrusted with the Sea of Flames or one of three exact copies, all of which must be hidden to keep them out of the Germans’ hands. He conceals it in a small wooden replica of Etienne’s house within the model he makes of Saint-Malo. Shortly thereafter, he is arrested by the Germans and disappears, leaving Marie-Laure alone with Etienne and his housekeeper. Soon, a greedy and selfish Nazi treasure-hunter, Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel, sets out on the trail of the Sea of Flames.

Werner's passion for science and his gift for radio mechanics earn him a place at a nightmarish training school for the Nazi military elite where, he’s told, “You will all surge in the same direction at the same pace toward the same cause. ... You will eat country and breathe nation.” Werner obeys, and his discipline and scientific aptitude carry him into the Wehrmacht, where he proves adept at finding the senders of illegal radio transmissions. But he is increasingly sickened by what happens when he tracks a radio signal to its source (“Inside the closet is not a radio but a child sitting on her bottom with a bullet through her head") and haunted by his memories of the Frenchman’s broadcasts, which remind him of a time when science seemed an instrument of wonder, not death.

Werner and Marie-Laure’s paths converge in 1944, when Allied forces have landed on the beaches of Normandy and Werner’s unit is dispatched to Saint-Malo to trace and destroy the sender of mysterious intelligence broadcasts. Etienne and Marie-Laure have been making these broadcasts for the French Resistance. Werner ultimately decides to allow the broadcasts to continue and eventually saves Marie-Laure from the repulsive von Rumpel. Although only together for a short time, they form a strong bond. Werner sends Marie-Laure away into safety but becomes gravely ill. Although he begins to recover, he mistakenly enters a field of landmines at night and ends up triggering a mine that takes his life.

Thirty years later, Jutta, Werner's sister, receives information from an old associate of Werner's that contains information on his death as well as a house from the model that Marie-Laure's father had made. Jutta travels to France with her son Max, where she meets Marie-Laure in the museum at which her father had worked. Marie-Laure discovers that the miniature house in which the Sea of Flames was hidden, which she put to sea with Werner in a hidden grotto in Saint-Malo, was with Werner when he died. The story ends with Marie-Laure, now 86 years old, walking with her grandson in the streets of Paris where she grew up.

Reception

As of December 13, 2015, the book has spent 82 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction. The New York Times also named it one of its 10 best books of the year. The novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Sales tripled the week after it lost to Redeployment by Phil Klay.

The novel won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

The novel was runner-up for the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction and won the 2015 Ohioana Library Association Book Award for Fiction.

External links

• Official website