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"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work"--… (mais)
gypsysmom: Similar locale in that Guernsey and St. Malo were occupied by the German army during World War II. Resistance is also a main theme in both of them.
BookshelfMonstrosity: Both of these heartbreaking World War II novels cause readers to pine for a happier ending than is possible for the characters. The stylistically complex writing describes the struggles that the characters -- some with physical challenges -- go through to survive.… (mais)
BookshelfMonstrosity: These moving, stylistically complex novels reflect on the brutality of World War II and its lingering effects. The characters have diverse backgrounds, some supporting the Germans and others the Allies. Their wartime experiences threaten to ruin their futures.… (mais)
This is a wonderful book. Its main characters are a blind girl, Marie-Laure, the daughter of the keeper of locks at Paris' Natural History Museum, and Werner, a German orphan who with his sister lives in an impoverished but loving orphanage. The narrative switches between them, and slides backwards and forwards through the years surrounding the Second World War.
Limited by the circumstances of their young lives, both travel away from their birth places. Marie-Laure's father is charged with a secret responsibility and flees from Paris to Saint-Malo where he has relatives, and Werner is picked out because his extraordinary skill in tinkering with radios brings him to the attention of the Hitler Youth.
These individuals are sensitively drawn. But so are the supporting characters: Marie-Laure's father and uncle, the housekeeper: Werner's sister, his house mother in the orphanage, and most devastatingly of all, his delicate and unworldly friend Frederick.
The towns and countryside which form the backdrop to the story, and the passages which allude to the natural world convince as well. Language is graphic and poetic, and the story itself is a strong one.
My only minor criticism is that I would have left the narrative, with its unanswered questions, at the end of the war. Fast forwarding to the post-war years and the very recent past served no purpose for me. Despite the fact that, after 530 pages, I had no desire for the book to end. ( )
An entrancing tale from two sides of the same war. I couldn’t wait for each to meet the other; a shame their togetherness was fleeting. Short chapters kept the pace easy, and the writing was beautifully descriptive. I can’t imagine the movie could possibly top the book. ( )
What really makes a book of the summer is when we surprise ourselves. It’s not just about being fascinated by a book. It’s about being fascinated by the fact that we’re fascinated.
The odds: 2-1 All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr Pros: Blind daughter of a locksmith meets reluctant Nazi engineering whiz! What more do you want? Cons: Complex, lyrical historical fiction may not have the necessary mass appeal.
“All the Light We Cannot See” is more than a thriller and less than great literature. As such, it is what the English would call “a good read.” Maybe Doerr could write great literature if he really tried. I would be happy if he did.
By the time the narrative finds Marie-Laure and Werner in the same German-occupied village in Brittany, a reader’s skepticism has been absolutely flattened by this novel’s ability to show that the improbable doesn’t just occur, it is the grace that allows us to survive the probable.
Werner’s experience at the school is only one of the many trials through which Mr. Doerr puts his characters in this surprisingly fresh and enveloping book. What’s unexpected about its impact is that the novel does not regard Europeans’ wartime experience in a new way. Instead, Mr. Doerr’s nuanced approach concentrates on the choices his characters make and on the souls that have been lost, both living and dead.
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
In August 1944 the historic walled city of Saint-Malo, the brightest jewel of the Emerald Coast of Brittany, France, was almost totally destroyed by fire. . . . Of the 865 buildings within the walls, only 182 remained standing and all were damaged to some degree. —Philip Beck
It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio. —Joseph Goebbels
Dedicatória
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
For Wendy Weil 1940-2012
Primeiras palavras
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Leaflets At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles.
Citações
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
If only life were like a Jules Verne novel, thinks Marie-Laure, and you could page ahead when you most needed to, and learn what would happen.
Nothing will be healed in this kitchen. Some griefs can never be put right.
Music spirals out of the radios, and it is splendid to drowse on the davenport, to be warm and fed, to feel the sentences hoist her up and carry her somewhere else.
There is pride, too, though — pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That's how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane.
Werner tries to see what Frederick sees: a time before photography, before binoculars. And here was someone willing to tramp out into a wilderness brimming with the unknown and bring back paintings. A book not so much full of birds as full of evanescence, of blue-winged trumpeting mysteries.
"Sublimity," Hauptmann says, panting, "you know what that is, Pfenning?" He is tipsy, animated, almost prattling. Never has Werner seen him like this. "It's the instant when one thing is about to become something else. Day to night, caterpillar to butterfly. Fawn to doe. Experiment to result. Boy to man."
"It's all right," he told her. "Things hardly ever work on the first try. We'll make another, a better one." Did they? He hopes they did. He seems to remember a little boat—a more seaworthy one—gliding down a river. It sailed around a bend and left them behind. Didn't it?
And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That her father and Etienne and Madame Manec and the German boy named Werner Pfennig might harry the sky in flocks like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough?
"How about peaches, dear?" murmers Madame Manec, and Marie-Laure can hear a can opening, juice slopping into a bowl. Seconds later, she's eating wedges of wet sunlight.
A sunrise in his mouth.
Últimas palavras
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
She listens until his footsteps fade. Until all she can hear are the sighs of cars and the rumble of trains and the sounds of everyone hurrying through the cold.
"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work"--
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Google Books — Carregando...
(4.29)
1
Limited by the circumstances of their young lives, both travel away from their birth places. Marie-Laure's father is charged with a secret responsibility and flees from Paris to Saint-Malo where he has relatives, and Werner is picked out because his extraordinary skill in tinkering with radios brings him to the attention of the Hitler Youth.
These individuals are sensitively drawn. But so are the supporting characters: Marie-Laure's father and uncle, the housekeeper: Werner's sister, his house mother in the orphanage, and most devastatingly of all, his delicate and unworldly friend Frederick.
The towns and countryside which form the backdrop to the story, and the passages which allude to the natural world convince as well. Language is graphic and poetic, and the story itself is a strong one.
My only minor criticism is that I would have left the narrative, with its unanswered questions, at the end of the war. Fast forwarding to the post-war years and the very recent past served no purpose for me. Despite the fact that, after 530 pages, I had no desire for the book to end. (