Title: All The Light We Cannot See
Rating: 4 Stars
Every now and then I try to catch up on Pulitzer Literature winners. This is how I happened to chance upon All The Light We Cannot See. Pulitzer prizes are awarded to American writers. Most of the time, the characters are American and/or the setting is in the US. This novel is different in that, even though the author is American, the setting and characters are French and German.
There are two main threads. One surrounds Werner Pfennig. When we first meet him, he is a child living in an orphanage in a coal mining town in Germany. There is no future for him. Once he reaches maturity, it's predestined that he'll be sent to work in the coal mines.
What saves him is a natural propensity and curiosity concerning radios. He devours all technical information. He finds a broken radio and repairs it. He becomes known throughout the neighborhood for his expertise. He fixes the radio of a prominent Nazi in his area. The Nazi recognizes that his talent could be beneficial to the Reich.
He is sent to a special school for Nazi youth. He recognizes that this experience could be what will save him from dying early in a coal mine. However, the price is that he is trained and raised to serve the Nazi cause. His sister, also at the orphanage, realizes that this price is too high and tries to deter him. Still, he continues on, and during World War II, he is assigned to the army. The army makes use of his radio skills to track down underground partisans fighting the Reich. He is the indirect cause of many deaths.
The second story is Marie-Laure. Blind, she is raised by her father, an expert locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. A stone, named the Sea of Flames, is rumored to be stored at the museum. It is believed that it bestows immortality upon the owner at the cost of great tragedy to those that the owner loves.
When the Nazis invade and Paris is about to be overrun, her father and Marie-Laure flee to Saint-Malo. There they live with Marie-Laure's great uncle Etienne. We learn that, before the Nazis came, the museum made three copies of the Sea of Flames. Her father is entrusted with one of the four gems. He has no idea if he has the real one. The father is arrested and is sent to work in a German factory.
Etienne, deeply traumatized by World War I, has not left the house in years. With the father arrested, Etienne, himself a radio expert, is now impelled to aid the resistance by transmitting coded messages.
Thus fate now begins to bring Werner and Marie-Laure together. Will Werner track down Etienne's transmission? If he does, what will happen to Marie-Laure?
The story is told in a nonlinear fashion. The last four days before the culminating event are interwoven with the longer narratives of Werner and Marie-Laure. All comes to a climax near the end of the book.
Werner has the more interesting narrative. He's essentially an innocent that just wants to escape with his sister from their predestined nasty, brutish, and short lives. He sees his gift with radios as his way out. In the Nazi training school, he sees their brutal ways. He doesn't approve but understands that this is his only path. He tries to look the other way but sees the evil anyway. When he's searching for partisan radio transmissions, he's not the one that does the actual killing but is forced to see the aftermath. Something in him breaks when an innocent young girl is killed. His is the universal story of how seemingly good people end up involved with horrific acts.
Being blind, Marie-Laure is heavily reliant upon her father. Her father works hard to encourage her independence. When he is arrested, Marie-Laure becomes an active participant in the Resistance movement. Although her father has always tried to protect her, in this world of occupation, she must find her own way.
Before her father was arrested, he'd given Marie-Laure the stone. A Nazi soldier, Reinhold von Rumpel, is dying of cancer. Knowing of the stone's reputation for bestowing immortality, he seeks it. Knowing its importance, Marie-Laure is determined to keep him from it.
The story is beautifully, even lyrically told. I found it almost compulsively readable.
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