All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr *****

At the start of World War II, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind adolescent. She lives with her father in Paris. Werner Pfennig is also an adolescent. He lives with his younger sister in a German orphanage.  All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr chronicles how the war affects their lives and how they respond. Both children are highly intelligent. Their intelligence guides them through the challenges they face.

Marie-Laure and her father leave Paris as the German army takes over. They end up with an uncle and a housekeeper in Saint-Malo on the north coast of France. When the Germans advance to Saint-Malo, questions of survival and resistance challenge Marie-Laure and the others who share her sanctuary. In the interim, she lives in a world of sounds, smells, Braille books, and music. She is curious and concerned, but never terrified.

Werner has a natural talent for math and electronics. He fixes all kinds of electronic equipment, especially radios. This talent opens one opportunity after another. He is enrolled in an elite school and from there he joins the conflict locating resistance transmitters. Given the war, this is a relatively safe and comfortable assignment.

From humble beginnings, both children end up in positions of privilege and make decisions of privilege, sometimes choosing individual advantage and sometimes more altruistic alternatives. The author, using the metaphor of a frog in a cooking pot of cold water, makes the case for the gradual corruption of good people.

“Some people are weak in some ways, sir. Others in other ways.”

“Everyone is trapped in their roles: orphans, cadets,…,the old Jewess who lives upstairs.”

A third thread concerns an invaluable stone, Sea of Flames, which Sargent Major Reinhold von Rumpel searches to steal for a glorious German museum.

The book is full of beautiful descriptions, especially from the point of view of blind Marie-Laure.

“She walks. Now there are cold round pebbles beneath her feet. Now crackling weeds. Now something smoother: wet, unwrinkled sand. She bends and spreads her fingers. It’s like cold silk. Cold, sumptuous silk unto which the sea has laid offerings: pebbles, shells, barnacles. Tiny slips of wrack. Her fingers dig and reach; the drops of rain touch the back of her neck, the backs of her hands. The sand pulls the heat from her fingertips, from the soles of her feet.”

 The book is a beautifully written exploration of the conflict between innocence and intelligence on one side and brutality and survival on the other. The author does not allow simple responses to complex situations but still allows for some optimism, at least for the thoughtful and clever.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for book recommendations.