All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (2014)
“What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.”
When people tell you to read a book, listen to them.
I’ve been getting recommendations for this one for a while, but I put it off because it seemed like a depressing read. I like historical fiction, but the sound of this novel — set in a small coastal French town during its occupation by and liberation from the Nazis — did not excite me. It seemed dark and depressing.
However, I could not have been more wrong. This book managed to relate the inherent darkness of war and loss in the most achingly beautiful way possible. Reading it was effortless.
–Minor Spoilers–
Doerr’s novel follows the seemingly dissimilar perspectives of Werner, an orphaned German boy who is enlisted into the Nazi machine when his aptitude for electrical engineering is discovered, and Marie-Laure, the blind daughter of a museum locksmith who escapes Paris with priceless treasure on the eve of the French occupation.
The narrative alternates between their points of view, jumping back and forth from the “present” day of the allied bombing of the French coastal town of Saint-Malo in August 1944, and the years of Marie-Laure and Werner’s childhoods leading up to that event.
We follow Marie-Laure’s slow loss of sight and the loving, methodical training she receives from her father in the way of navigating her dark new world. He constructs perfect models of the neighborhoods in which they live, teaching her to memorize her surroundings so that she can become independent. Unbeknownst to her, he is entrusted with the safekeeping of a priceless (and supposedly cursed) jewel when the Germans are at the point of invading Paris. He flees with his daughter to the home of his uncle in Saint-Malo, where they attempt to wait out the German occupation.
Meanwhile, Werner has grown up with his sister Jutta in an orphanage in Zollverein, a coal-mining town in rural Germany. Their existence has been threadbare and miserable despite the loving efforts of their orphanage matron. When Werner discovers a radio in a junkyard, his whole life changes. He teaches himself to repair it, and together he and his sister experience new worlds over the invisible airwaves. Slowly, as Germany descends into darkness and fascism, Werner and Jutta find a spark of hope and illumination in their one connection to the outside world.
Eventually, faced with the alternative of being forced to labor in the mines that killed his own father, Werner enters a competitive Nazi academy, where he uses his skill with radios to help the German cause. He eventually finds himself on a mission in Saint-Malo on the eve of its invasion by the allies, and his and Marie-Laure’s paths converge for the novel’s suspenseful and heartwrenching culmination.
The moonlight shines and billows; the broken clouds scud above the trees. Leaves fly everywhere. But the moonlight stays unmoved by the wind, passing through clouds, through air, in what seems… like impossibly slow, imperturbable rays. They hang across the buckling grass.
Why doesn’t the wind move the light?
Doerr’s prose is nothing short of magical. I devoured this book in just a few days, and I found myself lost in Paris and Saint-Malo, learning to navigate by memory and touch with Marie-Laure. My heart panged for Werner’s impoverished childhood and darkening world, while his charmingly inquisitive and ingenious mind had me rooting for him to overcome the trials in his path. I was literally on the edge of my seat as the deranged Nazi jewel hunter crept ever closer to Marie-Laure and her family.
Most surprisingly, I found myself comforted and unafraid of tragedy, even though I knew some must come in a novel like this. I think it was a combination of the beauty of the language, and the true warmth of characters like Marie-Laure’s father, who showed her and the reader how to create order out of chaos, to find calm in the midst of calamity.
At its surface, this novel is a compelling story of beauty and pain, comfort and suspense, love and disgust. But on a more profound level, the narrative is woven with motifs of sight and sound that demonstrate humanity’s struggle to connect with truth, both without and within ourselves.
Marie-Laure experiences the literal absence of light through her blindness, but in many ways, she teaches herself to see more clearly by “seeing” the invisible. One minor character who proves to be unbowed in the face of the Nazi rise is described simply thus: “He sees what other people don’t.” Marie-Laure’s uncle holds great fear in his heart that “a light you are powerless to stop will turn on you and usher a bullet to its mark.” Werner is deeply influenced by a disembodied professorial voice emanating from his secret radio as a child, and this voice functions as a godlike source of invisible, yet illuminating, wisdom for him amidst his community, which is petrified in the thrall of fascism.
Light is neutral; it can be both friendly and malicious. It can reveal secrets, but it can also reveal you to others. Light (both visible and invisible) symbolizes truth, true truth — which is beyond human reach or disruption. The light we cannot see, the hidden secrets of the universe, can be discovered through inquisitiveness and openmindedness.
True treasure is knowledge, and both patient observation (in the style of Marie-Laure’s meticulous father) and childlike curiosity (much like Werner’s) can be the key to enlightenment.
No matter what else happens, or what atrocities we commit against each other, the light of truth is unmoved and luminous. It is the spark of hope on the horizon, the glow of shared warmth among souls who search for and hold whatever fraction of it that they can.
“Open your eyes, concludes the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
My rating: 5 out of 5
Read if you like: historical fiction, drama, thriller, poetic language.
Fair warning: contains violence, sexual assault, and death.
