All the Light We Cannot See

By Anthony Doerr

This is a world war II story that centers around the lives of two young people: a young blind girl in Paris and a young orphan, who lives with his sister at an orphanage in Germany.

The young girl's mother has died.  Her father wants her to be able to navigate her way in the world so he builds her a model of their immediate neighbourhood. He then takes her out into the streets and helps her learn how to navigate her way around.  Her father is the locksmith for Paris museums and issues keys to employees every day.  As the German invasion of Paris is imminent her father is called to the Director's office and given an assignment to take his daughter out of Paris to a friend of the museums.  They had planned to take a train but the trains don't arrive so they walk all the way to the man's house.  When they arrive they find the house abandoned.  Not knowing what else to do they decide to head to St. Malo on the Normandy coast to seek safety with the Girl's strange uncle.  He is scarred from the first world war and won't leave his house.  He also has panic attacks.  He welcomes the girl and her father warmly.

We find out that the Paris museums are thought to have a rare diamond and that they have sent this diamond out of the city, possibly making forgeries to trick people who might be seeking it.   The girls father was given one of the diamonds and has hidden it inside a model of the Uncle's house.  One day he is contacted to ask to return to Paris.  He leaves the diamond in the little model and is never heard from again.

Meanwhile the young German boy Werner is a precocious young man.  He finds a radio that has been thrown away and brings it home and fixes it.  He and the other inhabitants of the orphanage enjoy listening to the broadcasts.  The boy especially enjoys some stories he hears spoken by a man who also plays music at times.  Werner gets books to teach himself more about radios and other things and is successfully in getting selected to a very special school your young men.  This quasi-military school is straining young men to the nazi philosophy.  It is a brutal place but one of Werner\s teachers notices his skill and knowledge and gets him to be his assistant to build radio signal triangulating equipment.  This role keeps Werner from being abused.

As the war goes on Werner moves to Berlin to help build more of the equipment but as the German defeats increase he is tasked with going on the road to track down radio signals.

Marie-Laure is looked after by her uncle and his housekeeper.  The housekeeper and some other ladies start to plan ways to sabotage the Germans who have arrived in their town.  She later convinces the uncle, who has a radio hidden in his attic, to join the resistance activities and he finally agrees to do so.

The housekeeper dies and then the uncle is arrested.  Marie-Laure is all alone in the house with no food and very little water.  She is terrified, especially when a German officer comes to the house looking for the diamond.  He is seeking it for its purported healing properties (he has advanced cancer) not for the glory of the Third Reich.

Although it is dangerous, Marie-Laure reactivates her uncles radio and reads from her braille book.  Werner hears her signal, but is reminded of the man he used to hear on the radio so he does not turn her in.  In the end he turns up at her home and saves her from the German officer.

This was a very engrossing novel, another amazingly well written story.  The author did a wonderful job of portraying the climate and life during the war and it was ingenious how he wove all the elements of the story together.  I was very impressed.