I finished All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr last week, right before I set off to Virginia for my cousin’s wedding. A joyous occasion, and a very valid excuse for my delay in sitting down to write about this wonderful novel - another one that I am seriously late to read, but better late than never. It has obviously been on my radar for quite some time - in addition to being met with critical and popular acclaim upon publication, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. Perhaps I just have a block when it comes to reading books that everyone else loveeees, but in the case of All the Light We Cannot See, I’m glad that I broke through.
Similar to my long lead time on actually picking up the novel, it took me a while to get into it. Several factors contributed to this. First, after The Razor’s Edge, I hit a bit of a readers slump. This happens to me from time to time when I’ve been reading, and reading, and reading, and then the thought of picking up a new book, and meeting new characters, and understanding a new world seems utterly exhausting. I wasn’t in the mood for anything, but I decided to read All the Light We Cannot See. Step one accomplished: pick book. Then it sat on my bedside table for two or three nights before I actually started the reading part. Then I did the thing where I read ten pages fall asleep, have to go back five to remember what’s happening, rinse and repeat for a couple of nights. When I got to page 20 (through the first section of this uniquely structured book) I finally found my footing, and I was off.
All the Light We Cannot See is the story of two children and the ways in which their lives are impacted by World War II. We have Marie-Laure, who begins the novel in Paris with her father, the master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History. When the war breaks out, they travel together, largely by foot, to Saint-Malo to live with Marie-Laure’s great uncle, Etienne. And then we have Werner Pfennig, an orphan in the coal mining town of Zollverein, Germany, who is intelligent and curious in equal measure - particularly when it comes to physics and the radio. At 14, Werner is selected, or rather called, to report to the National Political Institute of Education #6 at Schulpforta. He is singled out by a physics professor early on, and then enlisted early to go and track resistance radio broadcasts.
Eventually some higher power (fate or the radio) brings these two characters from warring nations face to face. What happens then is the culminating example in this novel of light we cannot (or do not) necessarily see. In the near total darkness of one of the most globally tragic periods of recent history, the light of human kindness still shone - I think that’s the lesson Doerr is trying to impart. The light of human kindness will always shine, and although Marie-Laure and Werner’s stories are fiction, we can only imagine that in a war that touched so many lives, innumerable small acts of love created chains of common humanity that stretched across Europe and over oceans, etc. It’s a beautiful message and one that Doerr delivers powerfully well. I should probably also mention that Marie-Laure is blind - lots of sight/blindness, light/dark imagery in this puppy - again incredibly well executed.
Before I move on from the plot, I should also quickly touch upon the driver of the plot, which is the fact that Marie-Laure and her father leave Paris, potentially in possession of the most valuable jewel (diamond to be specific) in the Museum of Natural History’s collection, the Sea of Flames. According to legend, said jewel also happens to be cursed, and whoever possesses it cannot be harmed, but serious misfortunes will befall all those he (or she) loves. When talented gemologist to the Nazis and deeply evil man (duh), Sgt. Major Reinhold von Rumpel catches wind of the stone’s existence, and rumored home in the Museum of Natural History in Paris, it becomes his mission to track it down. Von Rumpel is the only character (aside from our two main characters) whose perspective we get - or whose head we get into. Unfortunate because he is the WORST, but important because it keeps us up to date on what he’s doing and drives the plot towards a conclusion in which he finds the Marie-Laure or doesn’t, and finds the diamond or doesn’t - I’m not telling.
I didn’t really mind this storyline. It didn’t bother me that much aside from the discomfort it caused me due to a) having to be inside the mind of such a horrible character, and b) feeling worried about Marie-Laure. But I did kind of mind it, and it did bother me a little. A cursed gemstone and a black and white, purely evil villain feel like fairytale tropes. In a novel that otherwise felt like a real work of art, the diamond/villain thing cheapens it. While reading it, and after the fact, I almost felt that it would have been just as good and just as powerful with no plot at all. Or rather I can’t help but think that the beauty of the writing and the structure Doerr employs (I swear I’m getting to it right after this), in combination with the plot that would be left over if you took out the Sea of Flames and von Rumpel, because there is still plot, would have been enough. I know that’s probably not really true, and I enjoyed this book enough to not want to change it, but if I had to give a note, or rather issue a challenge it would be this: take out the stone and the villain, and see if the novel still works.
Now it’s structure time - woohoo! You may not be as excited as I am, YET - but you will be because the structure of this novel is what makes it so incredible. There are 14 larger sections of the novel (starting at zero), and at each break, we find ourselves in a different time. The first section is set on August 7, 1944, the second section goes backward, begins in 1934, and spans 6 years. Then in the third section it is August 8, 1944, then it is June, 1940. And so forth. The sections that take place in 1944 are significantly shorter (covering much smaller increments of time), while the intervening sections cover wider swaths of time, getting us closer and closer to the events that we already know are taking place in 1944. The effect is disorienting at first, but is ultimately enthralling. The suspense generated by the structure drives the reader through.
Each of these sections is made up of many short chapters alternating between Marie-Laure and Werner’s perspectives - and every once in a while von Rumpel (ugh). Chapter isn’t really the right word though - they are vignettes - on average around 4 pages long (though I didn’t actually do the calculations, so don’t quote me on that. I think this is another aspect of the novel that makes it hard to get into, but I once again encourage you to power through. In no time at all the characters come to life. Because the doses of each are so small, it feels like we barely spend time with either one, but the aggregate of small doses is powerful. I cared deeply about both Marie-Laure and Werner, AND I cared deeply about more than one of the secondary characters that inhabited their chapters (I know, not the right word).
The other good thing about Doerr’s structure - particularly the vignette style chapters (I don’t know what to call them), is that I never felt overwhelmed. It’s heavy, but it’s light. I was totally immersed in the story, but instead of feeling like I couldn’t put it down, I felt like I wanted to - Like Doerr said, “you only get this much at a time,” and I listened to him. All the Light We Cannot See is written to be consumed in a different way than most novels. It is meant to be walked through like a fine art museum or savored like a 12 course meal at a fancy restaurant where each dish is tiny but bursting with flavor. You should read it if you haven’t already!