All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Publication Date: May 6th 2014
Genre: Historical Fiction
My Goodreads Rating: 5/5
Source: Borrowed
Hello Everyone! I'm back with a book review after a long time- but I promise this one was worth waiting for. I'll be reviewing Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See" today, and trust me, just as soon as you read the book you'll understand why I love it so much.
 Doerr's novel, set in the Second World War, revolves around the life of a blind French girl and an orphaned German Boy. Flitting through years and countries, Anthony Doerr depicts marvelously the struggles of life during a war, no matter which character he is writing about.




 Marie-Laure is a French teenager who lives with her father, and has had deteriorating eye-sight since she was 6 years old. Her father is a locksmith at a museum, and guided her brilliantly through her blindness by building her a small model of the neighborhood so that she could walk home alone.
 Werner Pfennig is a young German orphan living in with his sister in a children's home. He is extremely inquisitive and has a great talent for engineering. He is discovered by a Hitler Youth academy, and is sent off to attend the school as a student.
 The story weaves through both characters lives before and after the war. Although their countries were on opposing sides of a war, and Werner's instructions were to kill anyone like Marie-Laure, they find an inexplicable connection.
  Doerr writes with great sensitivity, and the emotion seems to leap into the reader's heart as the story goes on. The author moves between dates and locations and maintains a great deal of suspense through the whole novel. He also assures us of some happiness in the character's lives, although the predominant tone is one of sadness, and is reflected in the character's dialogue.
 The horrors of war are emphasized through some of the minor characters, such as Werner's sister, Jutta, or his friend Frederick. The book does depict some of the more traumatizing aspects of military school and life under Hitler's rule, however, Doerr does not abstain from depicting the terror of living in occupied French life either. No side is portrayed as the "bad guy', and the book focuses more on the characters than the countries they belong to.
 Anthony Doerr is definitely a worthy winner of the Pulitzer Prize- and has shown the world of writing  a new take on the much exhausted topic of the Second World War. I'd recommend all of you to try out this book- but be warned, it is not a light read.