If the torrentially traumatic, highly fraught and heartbreakingly gut-wrenching events and permutations of the Second World War had never taken place, and the Second World War had been a story that was entirely ‘made up’, it would be seen to be too unfathomably tragic, and utterly evil in both it’s intensity and far-reaching tentacles of menace and mayhem, to be true.
Alas, the Second World War, we know from first-hand accounts and the history books written did in fact occur. And we know from the testimonies, from those who survived it, the sheer depravity, darkness and flagrant evil embodied in the human psyche and soul that many from that war exhibited. The blatant lengths humans will go to, to destroy other human beings, was displayed frequently in those dark years.
Such eternal truths are always expertly, extensively and beautifully (when the narrative becomes uplifting) dissected in powerhouse American author, Anthony Doerr’s, exemplary novel, All the Light We Cannot See.
It is during the latter days of the Second World War, and we are introduced early on to Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind sixteen year old girl who resides at Number-4 rue Vauborel in the once ethereally beautiful and mercifully peaceful coastal city of Saint-Malo in France. Now, however, the city is under siege from the Germans, and fear and foreboding permeate every inch of this once-valiant town and it’s now burdened and down-trodden inhabitants.
Marie-Laure and her father, Daniel LeBlanc, (once a veritably dependable and highly esteemed locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris) escaped from Paris (we are told in an alternating timeline) when Marie-Laure was twelve. Marie-Laure has lived at Number 4 in Saint- Malo for four years with her great-uncle Etienne (a shell-shocked First World War veteran who is now frightened of everything and will not go outside the house). And for a time with her father (until he ‘disappears’), and for a while with the esteemed housekeeper and confidant, Madame Manec.
Etienne and his brother used to do radio broadcasts once, from the house, and Etienne still does so. Playing exquisite classical music as well as speaking to whomever is listening by reading from books.
We told of the mass exodus from Paris by bewildered Parisians, and that “All across Paris, people pack china into cellars, sew pearls into hems, conceal gold rings inside book bindings”. Daniel tells Marie when they have left their apartment in Paris that he and her are “Hoping for a train”, and that everybody else is “hoping too”.
Werner Pfennig (whose story is told in-between us being Marie’s story) is an eighteen year old German private. Werner, an orphan, grew up in a mining community not far from Essen in Germany called Zollverein. Werner and his little sister, Jutta, lived at Children’s House, which was run by the kind Frau Elena, a Protestant nun from France. “She sings French songs in a screechy falsetto, harbors a weakness for sherry, and regularly falls asleep standing up. Some nights she lets the children stay up late while she tells them stories in French about her girlhood cozied up against mountains, snow six feet deep on rooftops, town criers and creeks smoking in the cold and frost-dusted vineyards: a Christmas-carol world”.
Werner was, we are told, recruited into Hitler’s Youth as a teenager, and driven to perform and serve the Fuhrer (Adolph Hitler). Although he has a conscience, Werner finds himself a participating cog in the formidable German war machine (aka the Nazis). Can Werner preserve the good inside him, or will he give over to evil, the evil of the Nazi regime? Jutta thinks he has sold out himself be joining the German army. Has he?
When Werner and Jutta were younger, they loved listening to a radio broadcast in French. “Werner and Jutta find the Frenchman’s broadcasts again and again. Always around bedtime, always midway through some increasingly familiar script”. Werner later becomes quite adept at working with radios, electrical equipment and doing complex mathematical equations under the eagle-eyed and cautiously watchful Dr Hauptmann, a technical sciences professor.
Werner has a friend, Frederik, when he is in Hitler’s Youth at Schulpforta. Where many of the boys are bullies, Frederik is a person with noble ideals and not complicit in nature with the Nazis. Can Frederik keep his spirit and soul intact in the face of cruel opposition from his classmates and the men on staff?
Can the feeble (or is she?) Marie contribute to the war effort for France? Can Uncle Etrienne?
Where has Daniel, Marie’s loving father gone to? Is he coming back?
Who is the mysterious and eloquent Frenchman who Werner and Jutta used to listen to on the radio?
Who is the ferocious and purpose-driven Reinhold von Rumpel? What is it he is looking for? How is Marie linked to his quest?
Do Marie and Werner survive the war? What becomes of their lives? Is it fate for them to meet or be kept apart?
What becomes of Saint-Malo and all of it’s inhabitants? Can the Americans ‘save the day’ for Marie-Laure, Etienne and all of Saint-Malo?
Anthony has written an exquisite novel of supreme intelligence, wisdom and validity. There were ultimately no winners in the Second World War, as far as the damage done to men’s, women’s and children’s spirits, souls and mental health. Not to mention the millions of lives lost – on both sides. All countries involved suffered. People are still suffering from it (think intergenerational trauma). Those on the wrong side and those on the side of good. In Europe, cities were decimated and attempts were made to extinguish the spirits of millions (think the tragedy of the Holocaust and the murder of millions of men, women and children) by death or physical, mental and emotional wounding.
All the Light We Cannot See is a book that all need to read. It shines a light on the cruelness, brutalness and futility of war. Yet also highlights the goodness that refuses to die in humankind. For good ultimately triumphs over evil. Hope eventually triumphs over despair. Bravery is victorious over cowardice.
I devoured this novel. It took me to a time and places that I have never been, and introduced me to people who committed atrocities and those who stood against these inflictions.
Bravo Anthony! Well done on writing an exceptional book that is timeless, yet also timely. I think everyone needs to read this book.
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