All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)

“What do we call visible light? We call it colour. But the electromagnetic spectrum run to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light in invisible” So we see a small part of light and there is All the Light We Cannot See - Jutta and Werner, two orphan German children hear a Frenchman explain science to them over the radio - a transmission that Werner’s home assembled crude radio catches and the children are glued to every night. Germany is changing slowly, one radio program, one slogan and one brain washed at a time. While in France, Marie-Laure the same age as Werner, is losing her sight and learning how to walk, read and make sense of the dark world she is being thrown into. Gradually, like moths drawn to a light they can or cannot see, both Werner and Marie-Laure are drawn to each other and will meet briefly, like a flash, surrounded by war, death, rubble and fire. They will save each other and then they will go their separate ways, forever grateful that they met, if only for a day.

All the Light We Cannot See is set in the 1930s and 1940s in Germany and France. We see the world through the eyes of Werner in Germany and Marie-Laure in France. Life is normal and ordinary, but changes one small bit at a time, till Werner finds himself in the German army (using his skills with the radio to take down resistance brutally) and Marie-Laure has to escape the invasion of Paris with her father and reach St. Malo (“We are Malouins first, say the people of Saint Malo. Bretons next. French if there’s anything left over.”) Unknown to her, her father, the Locksmith of the Paris museum, is carrying with him the most precious possession of the museum, the one stone that Hitler has set his sights on. The Germans will occupy Saint Malo briefly, before the Allied forces free it after the Normandy landing, but the relentless bombing will reduce the beautiful town to rubble. In all this, each man, woman and child will do whatever it takes stay alive, to help and to win the war. Werner will hear Marie-Laure’s voice over his precious radio, disobey orders to save her not once, not twice but thrice and, in doing so, fall in love with her.

Doesr’s writing is magical and in short alternating chapters, he shares with us the rising and crashing of hopes, the anguish and the desperation of Werner and Marie-Laure. While the two MCs do not know each other or even of each other, we can see them drawing closer and circumstances building for them to meet each other, brief though the encounter will be. There are no big turning points in the story - it proceeds gently but constantly tugging at the heart, through letters shared with each other, through simple acts of kindness and bravery, telling us what we are capable of in the most desperate of times.