All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
It is very rare that I read a World War II story that I don’t find at the very least touching or morally intriguing. It is difficult to find distaste for stories that explore the depths of an individual’s – or group’s – journey through any of history’s great shames. As a history enthusiast, I usually relish these stories for both their heart-breaking realness and for the stark reminder they give us of humanity’s contrast of evil and purity. Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See, however, takes this experience and seems to multiply it, taking the reader to unexplored depths and raw human empathy with rare subtlety and grace.
I found this book in an airport bookshop/chemist/newsagent sandwiched between a teen fantasy novel and a non-descript life-time drama type story. I almost overlooked it but the name kindled a faint memory of a friend declaring it as a must-read. Never again will I underestimate a book recommendation from said friend.
The mostly linear story is interrupted throughout by climactic moments; flash-forwards of a few days, when the small French town in which we find our two main characters is bombed. Doerr weaves the characters and lives impeccably, letting us in to the journeys of a young boy conscripted into the elite German force for his skill with math and technology, and a young blind girl who flees her Paris home with her father. These two stories are told in tandem and offer us insight into these children’s minds and experiences on different sides of the war. In spite of this, the reader never experiences an ‘us and them’ in terms of armies and sides, however we do feel a universal ‘us and them’. Those who do what they are told despite how they feel about it, and those who question the rightness of things, inside and out. This divide is tastefully portrayed through every character in the story and on every part of the scale. This is a story about the innate human fear of something bigger than us, and bravery to fight for something bigger than that again.
Doerr’s ability to capture a moment is sometimes overwhelming. His writing transcends the experience of seeing the places you are reading about and takes the reader through times and settings that they can smell, taste, hear and feel. He embeds hope and faith in every part of the story, and when he does include the tragic realities of hopelessness found in war and basic human fear, they come like a freight train, hammering through the reader with a sudden and overwhelming power.
This novel is profoundly moving. It is raw and visceral, and spun with empathy even in the most dislikeable characters. It is both charming and hopeful and then, suddenly, horribly real. It is a story that incites tears of passionate anger and hope, just in recalling it. It is a tale of the most human of experiences and I implore you to get your hands on it and consume the stories within it.
