All the Light We Cannot See

nu credeam că o să îmi placă așa de tare, dar ultimele 25 de pagini m-au distrus. vroiam ca între werner și marie-laure să nu fie nici un amor dar când zice volkheimer “a murit în saint-malo. cred că s-a îndrăgostit acolo”, a fost chiar genial mi-o venit să plâng un pic. vreau să o citesc în engleză.

I had big expectations for this book, with it being set during the war. The elements are there. A blind little girl who lives with her father, being forced to fleece when the nazis invade their city. A young German boy whose gift is to work with electronics, and that's the use the nazis give him.
I expected way more of their encounter but it felt very underwhelming. Also the language throughout felt very PG-13 for a book set during the war.
The way it's written never captivated me and it took me months to finish.

“We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.”[a:Anthony Doerr 28186 Anthony Doerr https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1417812584p2/28186.jpg]'s writing is unique in the way that it is both beautiful and able to get the point across. Many times I find that authors focus too much on prose and are unable to tell the story simultaneously. However, Doerr can do both. The novel takes place over the course of years, from the beginning of the war to the end. The two main characters, Marie-Laure and Werner, are very young when the story begins, and we see them as they grow into teenagers. Marie-Laure is a blind girl living in France with her father, who works at the National Museum of Natural History. Doerr does a great job at bringing their relationship to life. The two of them travel to her great-uncle's house in Saint-Malo where they stay throughout the course of the war. She has a love of shells, which is a reflection of the author's own passions. Werner is a german boy with a gift for science, particularly radios. He is able to fix them in quite little time. Because of this gift, he is placed in a special school where he is some distance away from his sister Jutta, who is younger than him and quite attached. We can see the effect his going away has on her and how it will later shape her life when she never sees him again after he is assigned to the war. Reading this book will make you want to know more, and due to the short chapters, you will keep turning the page. Doerr's attention to detail is admirable; he has a brilliant way of telling stories.

This book is as melancholic as it is complex. None of the characters had a necessarily happy ending, which I appreciate. I love that the Sea of Flames remained a mystery. Was the curse real or not? Did the war end because Marie-Laure/Werner pulled a titanic lady and dropped it in the ocean? Who knows. The greatest character in my opinion, was Frederick. He had the tenacity to do what was right when all the other characters failed to do so, but because of it, he also had the saddest outcome. We rarely see books set in World War II from the perspectives of a child in an occupied city in France or a child sent to become a German soldier. It's interesting that the perspective from the few characters that are on the German side were generally reluctant and felt guilt. How many people just went along with everything and how many reveled in the position of power over others? It's impossible not to compare to the current social climate. All of the racists actively benefiting from oppressing marginalized people and the even larger amount of passive people that just go along with the bs because of convenience or unwillingness to be a Frederick. This book was well written and I enjoyed it, even if it did inspire several naps along the way.

  This book is set in Germany and France. It is a dual point book about a german boy and a french girl. Werner the boy has a talent for fixing littary everything and he gets accsepted into a schol where he is trained to be in the third reich.Marie, the french girl is blind. She ‘survives' with the help of books.Obviouslt the war happens and well Marie moves for refugee and blablabla. No need to summerize it all.When first starting to read this book I felt it was hard to be motivated from it. It felt real slow and just tidious to get it moving. The writing style for me seemed almost like a real bad cartrip. The gas is pressed and it rushes in full speed before suddenly it coming to a full stop. Almost like at times, he uses too long on small details I was not really intrsted in. But rushed past intresting stuff.He does howver get some small point for his choices in adjectives and generally discibing. He is goof at making things sound pretty, realistic and just generally a wide language.I was real disepointed in just how little time the two mc got together. I wanted more, way more. I bearly even felt connetcted with them BOTH before they wre seperated again.I did not overall like this book too much honestly. Has to be a 2/5 for me. Only getting a few minor points  

i cunt about instalove all the time but wow... why is it in this book? warner sees marie once and somehow loves her? literally never talks to her... just sees her. oh wow i love her. what?
i would like to pretend it was more of a realisation of seeing a blind girl and being like wow these are the people im killing? and he starts to think it over. but thats not what the book says. characters IN the book literally are like “i think he was in love with a girl” like... ok. also oppressor falling in “love” with the oppressed is weird. stop doing it
for a book thats “ten years in the writing” the writing was kind of dog water. sorry. why did i need to do that that one guy has weird bumps on his dick. what the fuck? ok. well. over hyped

This is a story of small lives—an orphan who is an expert with radios, a blind girl who makes her way through her town by way of a miniature village her father has made for her—small lives that come together miraculously during a terrible war. It's a long book that builds slowly, beautifully. You really must read it for yourself.

Tough to review. There's no doubt this is a fantastic book. Beautifully written, palpable characters, fantastic backdrop. I can see why it's recieved so many accolades.
But all that said, I didn't find it enjoyable to read.
It took a while to figure out why. Even while reading it I'm thinking to myself “This is so good”, but at the same time wondering why I'm bored and looking forward to the next book.
Finally I think I nailed it. Nothing really happens. It's all set in amongst the background of a lot happening, but other than hearing about it, there's not much that really goes on with the characters that so much time has been spent making us love.
This feels like all the parts of a fantastic book that happen BETWEEN the major plot points.
I spent the majority of this book waiting for something to happen, and when it doesn't it feels like there no payoff for the time invested in these characters.
Maybe this is what literary fiction is about. I can see why people may like it. It's life through the eyes of others.
But books are a form of entertainment. This wasn't entertaining to me, and I couldn't wait to start a new book.

Magic. Pure magic.

This book...I'm almost at a loss for words! If you haven't yet read All the Light We Cannot See, it's imperative that you put it on your TBR list this instant.

Anthony Doerr's brilliant and captivating style of writing and story-telling blew me away. I was enthralled with the story and the characters from the moment I started reading, and couldn't put this book down!

The story is a World War II story, but it's so much more than that. It's so deeply human...cares, loves, curiosities, passions, yearnings, growing up. All of this is weaved into the parallel stories of two main characters, Marie-Laure and Werner. One French, one German, both swept up in opposite sides of the war in life-altering ways. Both children, both forced to grow up before they should have. The stories start in parallel, and then you get these expertly crafted wisps of the stories being somehow connected, and you watch as they slowly inch their way toward intersecting.

The way Doerr uses light throughout the book captivated me. It's the visible light that Marie-Laure can only see inside her brain due to her blindness, the creative spark of light inside the minds of children, the way a character near the end turns on all her lights to look as if she's expecting someone, rather then being lonely – all of this and so many more uses of light were just brilliant. If I was still in college and writing a paper on this book, I would have gone all sorts of crazy with post-its and underlining, and it would have been awesome.

Read the rest of this review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/02/review-all-the-light-we-cannot-see-by-anthony-doerr/

I think my reading experience of this suffered a bit because I dragged it out over a pretty long period and I ended up kind of forgetting some things along the way? That's on me though.

Anyway, this is beautifully written and has some fresh-feeling perspectives on WWII, which I feel like is kinda tough to do at this point.

This book was beautiful. I had to skip a small piece of chapter 11 and there are some curse words/foul language–these are expected in such a time period and it makes the book more honest and not rose-colored. It is not to excess or more than one would expect. The perspectives of people surrounding all of the main characters shows you something you would not expect and would not have thought of otherwise. I think I may remember these words after every time I hear Clair de Lune. Such an important piece of history to see from different perspectives. Absolutely beautiful.

At this point in my reading life, I'm no longer shocked when I don't fall head over heels in love with a book that the majority raves about. While I did enjoy All the Light We Cannot See, that enjoyment only came well into the second half of the book.

Mainly following Marie-Laure and Werner Pfennig, the story jumps between different times and places (predominantly during WWII). Marie-Laure is the daughter of a museum worker. When the war hits and France is occupied, the two of them take off to stay with a relative. Things are particularly lonely for Marie-Laure at her uncle's house. She's without her books and trapped inside for a long time given her father's fear for his blind daughter's safety.

Werner's story is far different. Orphaned and living with his sister and mechanically inclined, he eventually is forced to join the Nazis in their fight for the Reich. Though he doesn't think he agrees with what's going on, especially having witnessed the abuse and eventual disablement of a friend in his school days by these same people, denial and looking the other way play a big role in his service.

The stories, of course, eventually intertwine. There are some other points of view scattered throughout providing a different perspective. Another large focus of the book is a diamond that Daniel, Marie-Laure's father, flees with as a slide of hand effort. The legend is that this diamond possesses some sort of magical powers and it is a much sought-after item. This is the part of the book that's left me ambivalent. While the ‘Sea of Flames' is paired nicely with Marie-Laure's love of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, I personally don't care much for fantasy elements in historical fiction. 

As I already mentioned, I enjoyed the second half of the book much more than the first. The build-up was excruciatingly slow and I finally had to look up some spoilers to see if the rest of the book was going to be worth my time (something I rarely do). Over 500 pages in length and filled with thoughtful prose, this book is an investment. Ultimately, I vote that the time is worth it, but keep in mind that it's very slow-paced. I also need to point out that Anthony Doerr's writing is so lovely. That alone makes for a good reading experience.