All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel

Believe the hype. A beautifully written, fantastic book.

Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. I don't know why I waited so long to read Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See. I've loved his other books—in fact, his 2010 story collection, Memory Wall, was among the best books I read that year, so I know he's a tremendously talented writer. Maybe I hesitated because the book has already begun showing up on a number of year-end "best" lists, and lately I've had a bit of a disconnect between those the critics label as best of the year and those of which I'm most enamored. Well, I needn't have worried, because Doerr's latest is as good, and beautifully written, as I hoped it might be. In the early 1940s, the world is on the brink of war. Marie-Laure is a 12-year-old girl living in Paris with her father, a locksmith at the Museum of Natural History. Although Marie-Laure went blind at the age of six, she has a tremendous thirst for knowledge and a passion about the world around her, particularly the natural world. Ever-protective of his daughter, Marie-Laure's father built a model of their Paris neighborhood so she can navigate the streets and always find her way home. Meanwhile, in a German mining town, young Werner Pfennig is growing up with his sister, Jutta, in an orphanage. When the two discover a radio, it opens up a world of dreams and information. Werner also discovers his ability to repair and build radios, as well as his ability to grasp complicated mathematical and scientific concepts. This intelligence catches the interest of a Nazi officer, who sees that Werner is enrolled in an elite Hitler Youth school, where the fervor for perfection and rooting out inferiority begins to turn him into a person he doesn't recognize. As war closes in, Marie-Laure and her father flee Paris and head to the seaside town of Saint-Malo, where her eccentric great-uncle Etienne lives. Etienne has never been the same since the first World War, and he is unprepa...