#amreading All The Light We Cannot See

Author: Anthony Doerr

Discovered: Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Where read: (in part) During well deserved breaks from painting doors in my new flat in Old Town, Margate, Kent.

What's the story?

This year's Pulitzer Prize winner is an epic door stop of a novel set during and in the year's preceding World War II. These are well worn literary routes, it must be said, but what's compelling in this case is the viewpoint through which much of the novel is set; that of a blind young girl evacuated from Paris to St Malo to live with her Great Uncle.

The Word's Shortlist view:

This is a fast paced novel with a neat structure in which several distinct threads are destined to collide. Initially, in France, we meet Marie-Laure as her eye-sight fails and she is set tests and challenges by her father to develop her cognitive skills before her cataracts leave her completely blind. “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”  Alongside this story, and over the border in Germany, we meet Werner an 8 year old orphan with unique skills with radios and circuitry which make him attractive to the Hitler Youth.

The years running up to the war are brilliantly played out through the eyes of these youngsters on opposing sides of a growing conflict. Although the novel is over 500 pages long there are times, such as the passages in the early days of Werner's training, where you wish Doerr would apply the brakes. There is a lot of story here but you wonder what ended up in the editor's waste paper basket. 

I was completely immersed on this novel from the start and wish I could of read it in one sitting - ok, that's a bit indulgent but the point is that Doerr paints such vivid pictures that you're drawn in from the off. “Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.” 

My only criticism is that, as the sub plots come careering together in the final chapters there is a tinge of fear that we've overlooked some missing chapters from earlier that would allow us to dwell a little big longer in this extraordinary world.

Who should read this book?

Read this novel and find our why it spent 58 weeks on the New York Times Hardback Bestseller list and ended up being shortlisted by the New York Times as one of top 10 best books of 2014.

What’s next on the bookshelf

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber