This idea is reiterated in the book Marie-Laure is given by her father, Verne’s Twenty thousand leagues under the sea: Every outcome has its cause, and every predicament has its solution. Early in the novel, Marie-Laure’s locksmith father believes (or, perhaps, wants to believe) in logic: The novel’s overall subject matter is the obvious one – the tragedy of war, the way war destroys people’s lives – but within this are some interesting ideas. It is to the first of these that I’ll turn now. What interests me most as a reader is not whether authors get these sorts of details right but questions like why is the author writing this, why has the author structured the story this way, what does the imagery mean, and so on. Generally, I’m happy for the author to use contemporary-to-them expression. Some manage it (like Peter Carey’s True history of the Kelly Gang) and some compromise by relying on some well-placed words from an era. But it’s difficult, I think, to write in the language of another place and time, and when writers try to do it, it can feel forced. For some reason this sort of issue rarely worries me. One review I read and some in my reading group expressed irritation at Doerr’s use of American idiom (such as people going “to the bathroom in their pants”). Before that though, I want to raise one issue. Instead, I’d like to share some of its themes, or ideas, because these are what interests me most. Being a top-selling prize-winner, it has been reviewed widely. I’m not going to write a thorough review of this. This might sound difficult or confusing to read, but Doerr handles it well. It has a wide, but not unwieldy, cast of characters, and a complex structure comprising two chronological sequences, within each of which the stories of our two young people alternate. This leads him to a particular role in the war – tracking down partisan-resistance transmitters – that is different from most “soldier” stories.Īll the light we cannot see is a big book. Werner, the orphan, is a clever boy who develops a fascination with radios and things electrical. Marie-Laure’s childhood-onset blindness makes her initially helpless but she becomes a resourceful and imaginative young girl. They are ordinary young people trying to make a life for themselves in terrible times, but are extraordinary too. Marie-Laure and Werner are nicely realised characters. Their stories – Marie-Laure’s birth in Paris and flight with her father to Saint-Malo after Paris is occupied, and Werner’s childhood and youth in Germany followed by his war experience in Russia, Central Europe and France – are told in parallel until they inevitably meet. His interest is the personal experience of his young people – a blind French girl, Marie-Laure, born around 1928, and an orphan German boy, Werner, born around 1927. Zusak’s and Hegi’s girls are non-Jewish Germans, and Anne Frank is of course a Jewish girl in Amsterdam. Doerr’s book fits into this last group, but is different again. Some have drawn on the perspectives of children and young people – Zusak’s The book thief, Ursula Hegi’s Stones from the river and, of course, Anne Frank’s The diary of a young girl. A couple have been about the fighters, such as Alan Gould’s The lakewomanand Richard Flanagan’s The narrow road to the deep north. Many have been about Jews and the Holocaust, such as Imre Kertesz’s Fateless, Hans Bergner’s Between sea and sky, Marcus Zusak’s The book thief, and two memoirs, Halina Rubin’s Journeys with my motherand Anna Rosner Blay’s Sister, sister. I’ve read several and reviewed some World War 2 novels and memoirs. I wasn’t sorry we chose it, because I do, in fact, like World War 2 stories, and Doerr’s turned out to be an engaging one – warm, generous but not sentimental, and highly readable despite its alternating time-frames, locations and characters. I had, of course, heard of it, but it wasn’t high on my reading agenda until it was chosen as my reading group’s September book. Just when you thought that there couldn’t possibly be another angle to writing about World War 2, up comes another book that does just that, like, for example, Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer prize-winning All the light we cannot see.
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