All the Light We Cannot See is a novel by Anthony Doerr.
The war novel All the Light We Cannot See was published by Scribner.The Andrew Carnegie medal for excellence in fiction was won by it.
The novel is set in occupied France during World War II and focuses on a blind French girl and a German boy.
The master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris is the father of a blind girl.She hears stories of the Sea of Flames hidden within the museum, which is said to grant immortality at the cost of endless misfortune to those around the owner.The only way to end the curse is to return the stone to its rightful owner.Werner Pfennig is an orphan in the coal-mining town of Zollverein.After he finds a broken radio with his sister, he fixes it and uses it to hear science and music programs broadcasted across Europe.
When Germany invades France in 1940, Marie-Laure and her father flee to the coastal town of Saint-Malo to take refuge with her great-uncle Etienne, a shellshocked veteran of the Great War who spent his time broadcasting old records of his dead brother across.The Sea of Flames or one of three copies made to protect the original gem was given to her father by the museum.Marie-Laure's father was arrested while building a model town for her.Marie-Laure was left alone with Etienne and Madame Manec, who had been her maid for many years.The Sea of Flames is being searched for by a Nazi gemologist in order to save his life due to his cancer.He searches for each of the forgeries and looks for Saint-Malo.
The National Political Institute of Education is a state boarding school that teaches Nazi values.In technical work, he is efficient and obedient.He began work on radio technology and was soon placed in the Wehrmacht with a gentle soldier.After an innocent young girl is killed by his group after wrongly tracing a signal, Werner becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his position.
Madame Manec is a member of the Resistance along with other local women.Madame Manec dies after the activities have some success.Marie-Laure and Etienne transmit secret messages along with piano recordings.The group was told to track the broadcast after Etienne's signal was traced.The source that broadcast the science programs that Werner listened to at the orphanage is the one that he tracks to Etienne's house.Marie-Laure is alone, who continues the broadcasts, after Etienne was arrested for other reasons.
As the Allied forces lay siege to Saint-Malo, Werner is trapped beneath a pile of rubble, where he stays alive without food or water for days just by listening to Marie-Laure's radio broadcasts in which she reads from her Jules Verne novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues UnderMarie-Laure opened the model of Etienne's house and found a diamond.
After being trapped for several days, Werner escapes and heads for Etienne's house in pursuit of Marie-Laure as well as "the Frenchman” whose broadcasts had filled his bleak childhood with hope.Von Rumpel is in pursuit of the jewel.He killed von Rumpel and met Marie-Laure, who hid in the attic to protect herself and the stone.They formed a strong bond after only a short time together, and he fell in love with her.As they flee from Saint-Malo, Marie-Laure places the Sea of Flames inside a gated grotto flooded with water from the tide, returning it to the ocean.She gives the key to Werner, who is captured and sent to an American center where he becomes gravely ill, but just as he begins to recover, he accidentally steps on a German landmine at night in a fit of delirium.
At the time of his death, the model house which contained the Sea of Flames was given to Jutta by Volkheimer, who told her that she might have been in love with him.Jutta and Marie-Laure met in Paris when she was working at the Museum of Natural History.Marie-Laure found the key to the grotto when she opened the model.The story ends with Marie-Laure walking with her grandson in the streets of Paris when she is 86 years old.
Critics mostly liked All the Light We Cannot See.Vollmann, writing for The New York Times Book Review, praised the novel's writing style and the character development of Marie-Laure, whom he calls "an exquisitely realized creation", but he criticized the perceived one-dimensionality of Nazism.Carmen Callil wrote about the best parts of the book in a review for The Guardian.She thinks the novel is too long and the dialogue too American.[3]