This second novel from Anthony Doerr (About Grace) will likely draw comparisons with Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. It's set during World War II and features a girl who stands firm in the face of evil, thanks to the power of literature and learning. All the Light We Cannot See, though, is its own creature: an intricate miracle of invention, narrative verve and deep research--but above all a miracle of humanity.
It's August 1944 in the last Nazi stronghold in Brittany. Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Private Werner Pfennig are both trapped within Saint-Malo as the Allies prepare to destroy it. Marie-Laure--a blind 16-year-old, unable to read the leaflet urging residents to depart--is preoccupied with keeping her great-uncle's house safe from intruders. Werner, an 18-year-old German soldier, is holed up only five streets away, desperate to find the source of one particular radio transmission. This desire, we learn, has nothing to do with national allegiance and perhaps everything to do with Marie-Laure. These two exceptional innocents share a strange, star-crossed history.
Flicking back and forth between 1944 and the protagonists' very different 1930s childhoods, Doerr writes in the historic present throughout. The novel has several monsters, not least the driven Sgt. Major Reinhold von Rumpel, who is among those charged with relieving France of its heritage. Yet this man is allowed his moments of fear and humanity, as is most everyone in this abundantly peopled novel.
Doerr harnesses what only the finest artists can: the power to create, reveal and augment experience in all its horror and wonder, heartbreak and rapture. --Kerry Fried