Hello ,
I've spent the week engrossed in a unique WWII story, the kind of story that stays with you long after you've closed the book.
Because I write for young people, I don't often take time to read adult books, especially when they run over 500-pages. But I'm glad I read this one, and I would recommend it for older teens, as well as adults.
All The Light We Cannot See
It’s the story Marie-Laure, blind from the age of 6 who lives with her father in Paris, where he is a locksmith at the Museum of Natural History. The museum is her second home as she grows up,
learning the mysteries and beauty of nature through her fingertips. Dr. Geffard teaches her the names of shells--Lambis lambis, Cypraea moneta, Lophiotoma acuta--and lets her feel the spines and apertures and whorls of each in turn. He explains the branches of marine evolution and the sequences of the geologic periods; on her best days, she glimpses the limitless span of millennia behind her: millions of
years, tens of millions of years.
Intertwined with the girl's story is that of a German orphan boy Werner, incredibly bright, but trapped in a mining town that produces raw materials for the Nazi war machine. Werner is 8-years-old when he discovers a rudimentary radio in a junk heap. For three patient weeks, he studies it and works on it until he gets it to work. The
only legal radio programs spout Nazi propaganda, but Werner secret listens to a Frenchman broadcast of a science lesson for children. Open your eyes, concluded the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever, and then a piano comes on, playing a lonely song that sounds to Werner like a golden boat traveling a dark river, a progression of harmonies that transfigures Zollverein:
the houses turned to mist, the mines filled in, the smokestacks fallen, an ancient sea spilling through the streets, and the air streaming with possibility. It is these tenuous radio waves that eventually connect Marie-Laure and Werner, though it is years later when she is a 16-year-old working with the French Resistance and he is a soldier in the German Army using his gift for
math to root out illegal radio transmitters.
Marie-Loure and her father have fled Paris for the walled city of Saint-Malo on the coast of Brittany. Throughout the book we “see” from the point-of-view of the blind girl, but here at the ocean, her perceptions become especially keen as she encounters the live creatures that were empty shells in the museum. The reader is reminded of words Werner heard over the radio years earlier. The brain is locked in total darkness of course, children, says the voice. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light? Through a stroke of luck, I heard Anthony Doerr read the first few short chapters of the book at a literary festival in
Spokane last year. I was hooked by the specificity and beauty of his writing, and the tension of the story.
Still, I put off reading the book all year while it became a finalist for the National Book Award; a #1 New York Times bestseller; was named a best book of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Powell’s Books, Barnes & Noble, NPR’s Fresh Air, Entertainment Weekly, the Washington Post, Seattle
Times and the Guardian to name a few. I feared a tragic ending, after all, it’s a war story. I finally overcame my trepidation, and now I highly recommend the book. It touches on all the grand themes of life that we struggle to understand. The relationship between Marie-Laure and her father, and that which she develops with her great-uncle Etienne are transformative and the book is worth reading for them alone,
but there is so much more that is difficult to put into words. The intricate structure crafts myriad threads together, a haunting and spectacular weaving of the highest and lowest of human nature.
On his website, Anthony Doerr explains the meaning of the title, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE. It’s a reference first and foremost to all the light we literally cannot see: that is, the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are beyond the ability of human eyes to detect (radio waves, of course,
being the most relevant). It’s also a metaphorical suggestion that there are countless invisible stories still buried within World War II — that stories of ordinary children, for example, are a kind of light we do not typically see. Ultimately, the title is intended as a suggestion that we spend too much time focused on only a small slice of the spectrum of possibility. Let me know if you've read the book. I'd love to hear what you think about it. This past week PURE GRIT was selected by social studies educators for a spot on the 2015 list of Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, an annual reading list of exceptional books for use in social studies
classrooms. This year there are seven pages of Notable books, including a couple I told you about here MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE: HOW ONE SONG REVEALS THE HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS, written by Claire Rudolf Murphy and illustrated by Bryan Collier, and REPORTING UNDER FIRE:16 DARING WOMEN WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND PHOTOJOURNALISTS, by Kerrie Logan Hollihan. You can see the full list here... Here's another WWII story that broke this week. Top secret documents giving orders for the D-Day landings have been found under hotel floorboards after being discarded by Army chiefs seventy years ago. Story and pictures from
The Telegraph... Thank you for spending a few minutes with me today. Your support means a lot to me, and I'm always interested in hearing your thoughts. you can write me here... If you know someone who might enjoy
my newsletter, please forward this e-mail. Currently, new subscribers will be entered in a drawing to win a $25 gift certificate to their favorite independent books store. If you'd like to get your hands on a copy of PURE GRIT, here's the
place! If you'd like a signed copy and I'm not coming to your neighborhood soon, let me know. I can send you a personally autographed book or a signed bookplate. I will never spam you or sell your email address, you can unsubscribe below anytime with a single mouse click. To find out more about my books, how I help students, teachers and librarians, visit my website
at www.MaryCronkFarrell.com. My best, Mary
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