The Brilliance of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
WW2 & the importance of a child's perspective
** A spoiler-free review/essay! :D
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When the Nazis occupy Paris, they have to flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, carrying what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, and is enlisted in Hitler Youth Academy to track down the resistance.
Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
All The Light We Cannot See is as close to perfection as a novel can get.
This isn’t your typical historical fiction trying to wring out sympathy from its readers with bloodshed, horrible bombings, and ‘people helping one another in the darkest of times’. Well, it is. But it’s also not.
You see, books either have riveting plots, well-rounded character arcs, or fantastic execution. They rarely have all three. When you have two or more different storylines, it’s easy to fumble a plot point or have a character do or say something completely unaligned with their personalities. All The Light We Cannot See really said “nope, couldn’t be me!!!”
With five novels already under his belt, I reckon Doerr decided this would be his magnum opus, and holy shit did he deliver.
❛Good evening. Or Heil Hitler if you prefer.❜
The book opens with two quotes: one is an extract from The Burning of Saint Malo by Philip Beck, describing the aftermath of WW2 on the beautiful city; the other is a single, chilling sentence from a speech by Joseph Goebbels on the power of the radio.
The first half of the book sprawls across the next few years, and we see how the ripple effects of the ongoing half-fledged conflict start to seep into the lives of our main characters.
In proud Germany, “good evening” has slowly but surely evolved into “Heil Hitler”, and Werner’s friends begin to don the uniform of Hitler’s Youth. Werner’s skills eventually earn him the ‘opportunity of a lifetime’ at the National Political Institute of Education, a school where they train future leaders of Germany. But as the school’s curriculum unfolds, Werner increasingly finds that he disagrees with the values he’s taught, and the corporal punishments inflicted upon the slower and weaker boys.
Meanwhile, in desolate France, the wails of sirens punctuate the air; dust and ash strangle the city. One day, Marie-Laure’s father gifts her a model of Saint-Malo. The model is uncanny, featuring familiar houses, streets, and staircases — and a secret compartment. When she eventually finds herself separated from her father, she is left only with her heightened senses to protect herself, and let’s just say the bombs aren’t the only thing she has to worry about.
As the novel progress, we see how the war parallels Marie-Laure and Werner’s transition into adulthood as their paths begin to veer towards an inevitable intersection.
❛To really touch something is to love it.❜
Doerr really flexed his writing prowess in this one. His prose is clean and succinct, and yet succeeds in unspooling such an intricate web of interconnected stories with so much emotion and vividness. No word is wasted, no plothole left uncovered. Like bro was really writing for his LIFE. But I mean, I get it. As an author, if you don’t win at least one Pulitzer Prize (or equivalent) in your literary career, is there even a point to life?
Meticulous planning and efficient syntax aside, what really had my eyes glued to the well-worn, overly-annotated pages of my copy was Doerr’s expert use of language to invoke the senses.
This particularly shines through whenever Marie-Laure is on the page. Though blind, her world is bursting with texture and sensations. Every inch of Paris and Saint-Malo is described to us not through images, but through touch, sounds, and taste. We feel each whorl of a seashell, memorise the number of steps from her apartment to the bakery and back, smell the urine and gasoline in the wind, feel the danger brushing the back of our neck.
As we traverse the corporeal world through the intuitive Marie-Laure, our desire for a less tangible experience is fulfilled through the intelligent but shy Werner. Alone in a place where “everything is glory and country and competition and sacrifice”, he is put through trials that test everything he thought he knew. In the trenches, can steadfastness in the face of evil and quiet determination really overcome debillitating fear, exhaustion, and homesickness?
❛Don’t you want to understand what is happening?❜
However, despite its significance and sheer scale, the war remains merely a backdrop against our heroes’ trajectories. Doerr is adamant about maintaining an element of innocence, and he does this by keeping our perspectives at the eye level of adolescents too young to understand but too old to be passive.
Things are always just out of reach, too difficult to fix — cupboards, radio wires, dreams. Their inexperience and physically smaller statures handicap their ability to fully comprehend what is going on. As a result, their narratives are blanketed simultaneously by an air of confusion and urgency to react.
“All you want to do are mathematics problems,” Jutta whispers. “Play with radios. Don’t you want to understand what’s happening?”
“What are you listening to?”
She crosses her arms and puts the earphone back and does not answer.
“Are you listening to something you’re not supposed to be listening to?”
“What do you care?”
“It’s dangerous, is why I care.”
“We’re dropping bombs on Paris,” she says. Her voice is loud, and [Werner] resists an urge to clap his hand over her mouth.
Jutta stares up, defiant. She looks as if she is being raked by some invisible arctic wind. “That’s what I’m listening to, Werner. Our airplanes are bombing Paris.”
This doesn’t mean we are shielded from violence completely. You will still inevitably read about arrests, raids, destruction, and blood — just through the blinkered lenses of young teenagers trying their best to understand.
This makes certain parts of the story especially heart-wrenching to read eighty years later, as a semi-omniscient adult with a passable knowledge of the atrocities that had happened then. One such example is when Marie-Laure and her father attempt to flee Paris by train:
“And the armies?”
“There are no armies, Marie.”
His hand finds hers. Her fear settles slightly. Rain trickles through a downspout.
“What are we doing now, Papa?”
“Hoping for a train.”
“What is everybody else doing?”
“They’re hoping too.”
The fates of the people our main characters come across on their journeys are mostly left uncertain, accurately reflecting the realities of the time when long-time neighbours could disappear overnight, and separation from your loved ones meant never knowing if you would ever be reunited again.
It is a difficult topic to rehash — nobody wants to imagine their family and friends being snatched away, but it had happened.
It is still happening today.
As I’m typing this, people on another side of the globe, with whom you have absolutely no connection, are having their lives upended and thrust into chaos and terror. But we already know this. All The Light We Cannot See just reminds us why we should care.
❛Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.❜
Of course, this won’t be a complete review if I don’t talk about the meaning of the title.
Saint-Malo is surreally beautiful, with its old cobblestones and unique olfactories. And though Marie-Laure is blind, any pity we might feel for her is dampened by her gentle, innate recognition of the small and inconsequential; things we usually take for granted.
Marie-Laure sees in more colour than those with perfect sight. Through her darkness, we find that the world is, in actuality, not so dark. Her and Werner’s innocence and immutable faith remind us that there is always help, there is always hope, and there is always light — somewhere, somehow. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in The Little Prince:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
❛He sees what other people don’t — what the war did to dreamers.❜
Constructed by flawless prose and masterful storytelling, All The Light We Cannot See is the most delightful club sandwich of story, heart, and characters, all executed effortlessly and with dead-shot precision. It is not sticky sweet, but a balanced, palatable dose of hope for the cynics. And while reading from a teenager’s perspective may be off-putting for some, this book will linger in your mind long after the final page.
Now, after putting it aside and going on to read about the atrocities happening in current time against minorities, women, and the marginalised, I think of Marie-Laure and her father, Werner and Jutta, the perfumer, and the girl with the red cape; and am duly reminded to remain vigilant, active, and compassionate — and, more importantly, to not be blind to who the real villains are.