"All The Light That We Can Not See" By Anthony Doerr Review

Marie-Laure, born in 1928, is an orphan. With six years she went blind. But her father do not quarrel with fate: “You can be lucky or unlucky.” Rather, he is doing everything to enable his daughter to open up the diversity of the world and live a life as possible undisturbed. With admirable imagination, drive and discipline he gives a unique childhood the girl.

Every morning takes Daniel LeBlanc Marie-Laure with his extraordinary work. In the “Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle” he is the steward of the twelve thousand keys for all locks of the museum building, workshops, greenhouses and the Jardin des Plantes.

He uses every second, to develop the sense of touch of the child by giving her keys and everyday objects in his hand, and the scientist Dr. Geffard expanded its sensitivity with treasures from around the world, he brings out the closets and numerous drawers of his laboratory: Shellfish with different housings, spines, thorns, turns, hollow spaces, soft, smooth or rough … at home everything is set up on Marie-Laure’s promotion.

Her father makes sure that everything is always in the same place, and even arranges the food on her plate according to the dial of the watch on.

Adhesive tape on the floor and twisting threads from room to room you allow the orientation in the apartment. So that it can soon find their way in their neighborhood, he constructs in his workshop a miniature wooden model with houses, streets, squares, benches, trees and gullies. For each birthday he hides his gift in a new wooden box that can be opened thanks to cleverly arranged strips, joints and mechanisms a headache.

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On the basis of a textbook learned Marie Braille, access to the world of books.

The most valuable exhibit of the Natural History Museum’s “sea of ​​flames”, the largest diamond in the world. While Marie-Laure, the teardrop-shaped red inside the bluish stone never see, but he ascribed mythical story of happiness and unhappiness, a curse and its abolition it retains in memory.

In June 1940, distributes the war father and daughter from Paris. The museum is closed. Its treasures have been brought before the advancing Germans in safety. The “sea of ​​flames” and three copies of it were placed at various locations in custody. Daniel and Marie-Laure find at Uncle Etienne in Saint-Malo shelter.

In the distant Eating a contemporary of Marie-Laure, meanwhile, has spent no less extraordinary childhood. Werner Hausner and his younger sister Jutta are orphans and grow up in a home where are large after the world economic crisis of hunger and misery. But Werner, small for his age, protruding ears and snow-white hair seems to “float” above all. Every day he roams his sister in pulling hand carts, with the districts around the Zollverein colliery. They explore all perceive what children’s eyes, talk with the baker’s wife and bring the children enjoyed other home bread and milk.

But most of all notices and promotes Elena, the Alsatian teacher, Werner’s scientific curiosity ( “When the moon is so large […], why he looks so small?” “When lightning strikes into the sea, then why not all die fish “) and its handicraft and technical talent, because he tinkers for the children toys made of paper, experimenting with electronic waste and brings a defective radio running again Elena’s prophecy -” you’ll once something big do” – come true, but unfortunately not for the benefit of mankind. He first heard thanks to its scientific and technical talent of the few who for the elite schools of the Nazi regime, the “National Political educational institutions” (Before the Fall), are chosen.

He is not only ideological party line aligned ( “You eat will home and breathe nation … place weakness … marching in the same direction … alone for the duty to live”), but also vexatious separation methods and inhuman discrimination to know. but he prevails, is radio technician who draws with a special unit to the eastern front, contributes to verhehrenden advance of the Wehrmacht.

In August 1944, the tide has turned. Werner was ordered in one of the last held by the Nazis cities to Saint-Malo. With tracking devices it is to find the fighters of the Resistance, which transmit the Americans encrypted information about the positions of the Germans. Under heavy fire of the enemy his quarters destroyed, he spilled in the basement because it actually feels a delicate female voice from a not distant radio that reads “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” from Jules Verne. It is the voice of Marie-Laure’s.

This indicated the two plot lines that include the childhood and youth of the two protagonists. Although the French and German meet each other personally, their fates combine subtly with each other. be told their careers in the present tense, in regularly alternating perspectives and seemingly unsystematic chronological order (the respective narrative period serves as a chapter heading). On page 145 (June 1940), a new storyline occurs added. The German officer Reinhold of lumber to commandeer the fabled diamond for the planned German Capital of Culture Linz, while pursuing but also vital personal interests.

Finally, on August 7, 1944 with the novel uses narrative, through all three plotlines in Saint-Malo together. The Allied landings in Normandy. Broadsides “raining from the sky … blow on the ramparts, fly radschlagend over the rooftops.” The city is destroyed by the Allied bombings voraufgegangenen and burned. The largest part of the population leaves the leaflet calling the Americans following the city. Marie-Laure but does not dare addition, since it is now alone. Her father had been ordered back to Paris, but never arrived there, and Uncle Etienne is imprisoned for his activities in the Resistance (in which she walked him to hand).

The location of the blind girl escalates life-threatening, as of lumber discovered it the third plotline to the legendary diamond ensures a kind of dramatic relaxation of the always harrowing world war history. The ruthless hunt a greedy evil for treasure, the criminal search for the original under three hidden copies to the esoteric properties of diamond (which to my taste but out of place) may also be ingredient of an exciting youth novel.

Every detail has its place in the functional coherent context. Nothing is merely filling in this thematically dense and consistent structure. For example, reflected in the basement scene when Werner hear the soft voice, the fate of his perished in the coal pit father that the son had always pursued. Also interesting are the disparate functions of the radio, threatening and saving technology, an important information channel and instrument is a technical innovation of political indoctrination (The novel – unless otherwise specified – a Goebbels quote preceded that “the German revolution” without radio not in this form would can play).

Linguistically the novel inspired throughout with detailed descriptions, vivid descriptions, fascinating eloquence, clever aphorisms, unusual angles (as experienced a blind the world?), bold metaphors and comparisons (Marie-Laure eating an omelet “. The eggs taste like clouds as spun gold.” and canned peaches, “pieces of wet sunlight”) No wonder that Anthony Doerr for his wonderful novel by Pulitzer prize, 2015. was honored. This book I have in d ie list Zu my 20.