Our Novel Escape discussion

Read and discuss All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, winner of Goodreads Choice Award for Historical Fiction.

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work.

Fist of all, I'd like to congratulate the author for persevering in writing this book. It took him ten years(!) to write this book, and it certainly has paid off for him, with all the acclaim and praise this has gotten.

Second, (gulp) this book is a bit intimidating because of it's size. But the chapters are really short, so it kind of deceives you into reading "just one more chapter".

I can't wait to get started!!!

I may be the only person in the world who didn't enjoy this book, but maybe it's because I had decided "I just can't read any more books about Nazis for a while", then I went ahead because of the rave reviews.

Robin wrote: "I may be the only person in the world who didn't enjoy this book, but maybe it's because I had decided "I just can't read any more books about Nazis for a while", then I went ahead because of the r..."

I hear you, Robin, I wanted to start this, but I am on WWII overload. (Couldn't get into "Unbroken" either)