All the Light We Cannot See

5 of 5 stars

Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See is an entertaining and vivid read. If one had to sum up the overall theme of this book it would be, in a word, disorientation. Events surrounding WW2 would have caused intense confusion for even the most staid individual which makes the endurance and drive of the blind protagonist and her locksmith father all the more astonishing. We begin with Marie Laure in Saint-Malo right before it is about to be hit by American bombers as she smells the fresh print on a paper that has fluttered down to her windowsill telling her to evacuate, only she cannot see it. We have the young German orphan and his sister discovering snippets of radio broadcasts of unknown origin. Marie Laure’s father the locksmith makes complex puzzles for her as gifts and her great-uncle’s constant visions of ghosts and mental confusion are a part of his housebound existence. We feel Werner’s confused entrapment in the pitch black cellar of a hotel as he hears or doesn’t hear Marie Laurie’s broadcasts and even in Werner’s final moments, it is disorientation from fever that is responsible for his life being lost.

This disorientation also exists in the way the text is arranged and written as Doerr jumps back and forth in time from 1940-1944 and then even further forward near the end of the book. The characters themselves are full of contradictions, questions and regrets. There is never a clear, unobstructed path. Doerr navigates the grey edges of human frailty with prose that causes the reader to stop time and again to reflect on a perfectly worded turn of phrase, metaphor or simile which at times borders on, but does not cross over into, purple prose. His gift for description paints the brightest hues even in the mind of the blind Marie Laure and makes the story come alive in a way that few fiction works can, especially ones covering the bleakest period in recent human history.