All the Light We Cannot See- Book Review

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I love hearing war stories. But what’s even more inspiring and deep are the little stories which are often untold and hidden by the stories of heroic victories and defeats.
My favourite ones include the story of Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician who invents a machine to crack Nazi codes and solves the impossible Enigma machine during the WWII, only to be classified and revealed decades after the war; the story of Leisel Meminger escaping her war-ridden life through the solace of books; and the story of Desmond Doss, who refuses to bear arms, but fights the war with compassion and saves almost a hundred men in the battlefield, and many more.

Adding to this list, Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See is a beautiful story I could read over and over again. It portrays two parallel lives of Marie Laurie and Werner, set in two different countries, France and Germany respectively, during the WWII.  

Marie Laurie loses her vision at the age of six and the war leads her to a city called Sant Malo, where she spends almost all her life, reading and wondering about how the world must look like now. Her father disappears and she lives with her grand uncle, who takes care of her just the same or even better.  Most people tell Marie Laurie that she’s brave but she puts it that she didn’t have much of a choice.

Werner, grows up in an orphanage with her sister Jutta and like most other German boys, he joins the Nazi boy-scout. He didn’t have much choice either. Although, his brilliance and skills in technology favours him in ways that help him survive his military life. He starts by repairing radios and locating signals, which in a strange way connects him to Marie Laurie, even before their encounter.

Their encounter, comes around the end of the book. It is a very brief moment, romantic in the rarest way and magical in every possible way. It broke my heart reading something so beautiful that I had no idea was going to end in one moment. A mythical diamond with a story most people are not sure to believe, is one of the elements that drives the plot of this book and I’d rather not spoil it for you right now.

Anthony Doerr’s way of writing is so pure, that I think it has a power of changing the world in ways we are not aware of yet. You could say that he is a poet whose metaphors are bare and true.   
I'd definitely recommend you to read the book.  


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