What readers think of All the Light We Cannot See, plus links to write your own review.

All The Light We Cannot See is the Pulitzer prize-winning second novel by Anthony Doerr. The audio version is narrated by Julie Teal. In 1934, six-year-old Marie-Laure LeBlanc is going blind, and her widowed father, Daniel, principal locksmith at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, spends his spare time crafting intricate models of their part of the city so that she will be able to find her way when her sight is gone. She spends her days interrogating the scientists, technicians and warders at the museum about their expert subjects, or reading and rereading the Braille novels her father gives her on her birthdays.

Also at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, hidden behind many locked doors, is the Sea of Flames, a pear-cut diamond that, according to legend, is cursed, preventing the person who has it from dying, while bringing bad luck and even peril to those around them. When the war begins, the director of the museum understands just how coveted it might be, and takes action. He’s not wrong: it’s on Adolf Hitler’s wishlist.

In a home for the orphans of coal miners in Zollverein, Germany, seven-year-old Werner Pfennig and his younger sister Jutta are under the care of French House directress, Frau Elena. Werner is small, with a shock of white hair, resourceful, a talented scavenger, and ever curious, always, always reading, and when they find a discarded radio, he is able to make it work, even improve its function. Educational programs from who-knows-where have Jutta’s fervent attention while the other children love the music.

But while Werner is absorbed in his textbook, Jutta hears news from foreign countries, and is dismayed and disturbed by what she hears her country is doing (bombing Paris!)

All the boys in the home are destined for the mine where his father died; it’s Werner’s reputation for radio repair, and his aptitude for mathematics that puts him on a different course. At General Heissmeyer’s famous school, he joins other German boys of the right appearance, some smart, some the offspring of influential people. It’s not a kind place but Werner’s genius puts him under Dr Hauptmann’s protection.

With the threat of occupation by German forces, the Museum director sends Daniel LeBlanc away: he and Marie-Laure end up in the Saint Malo home of his uncle, Maire-Laure’s seventy-six per cent crazy Great Uncle Etienne.

How the boy, the blind girl, and the diamond end up in Saint Malo on August 8th, 1944 as the Americans bomb the city and a Nazi gemmologist searches for the elusive stone, is the story Doerr tells, over two time-lines, via multiple narratives (even the city gets a turn or two), and letters between family members.

With gorgeous descriptive prose, Doerr easily evokes his setting and era even as he describes the subtleties of the German propaganda machine, the instances, both large and small, of indoctrination, the mindset that led to collaboration with the enemy, the cruelty of those in power and the atrocities they commit or condone; but also the tiny acts of resistance that will have the reader cheering on the Malouins.

Like Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, it tells the story of ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances, and Doerr gives the reader characters who repay emotional investment. Marie-Laure’s descriptions come from her unique perspective: “Madame seems like a great moving wall of rosebushes, thorny and fragrant and crackling with bees.” It's war, so there are no unrealistic happy endings, but there are lots of moving moments and one or two very satisfying ones. A deserving prize-winner.

This book went to the top of the list for WWII novels I have read. It was beautifully written and captivating. I was sorry it ended.

This had me gripped from the first page. I read it very slowly as I didn't want to finish it, yet I couldn't wait to read more. Captivating and so well written. One I will never let go of!

This book mesmerized me. I just finished it -- am in a profound daze and having trouble reorienting myself to my date, time, place, and life. It is one of the most compelling books I've ever read.

When I saw this book, I was attracted to it being about a blind girl in World War 2 but the book has bought so much to me. It has bought a more lively sense of awareness about the war, how it really was. The short chapters were like a breath of fresh air...no long details, it was more interesting that way, at least to me.

I will not give a spoiler alert to the ending but the book tended to be a bit predictable in a way but then twists you in the ending that leaves you sad but still satisfied that you read it.

I will tell people about this book and I have done just that.

Anthony Doerr...a truly fantastic book of 2014 and a good read into 2015.

I had not read anything by Anthony Doerr prior to this book. I simply picked it up because it looked interesting. I was very impressed. Almost every two pages switches from one main character, the blind French girl, to the other main character, Werner, the young German boy. The story does not run chronologically either. In the beginning it is 1944; later it is 1942 then back to 1944. This writer manages to make all of this work without ever leaving the reader confused.

The characters are so well developed the reader feels close to them and likes most of them. The book is poetic and yet realistic.

The blind girl's father may be carrying a fantastic diamond from the Paris Museum of Natural History. He and the girl escape to St. Malo, where the boy of 16 is sent as a soldier in the German army. St. Malo is the last bastion of the German defense, and they are under attack.

The boy manages to save the girl from a German searching for the diamond after the arrest of her uncle and father. The ending is not a romantic ending. It is realistic, complex, and most interesting reading.

I really liked over half of the book, but then it to me was too confusing. It kept jumping back and forth in time and place.