ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

Anthony Doerr spent ten years writing this book.  Its construction is so careful, and deliberate, and artistic, that ten years almost doesn't seem like enough to get it written.

This book contains the parallel stories of Werner and Marie- Laure.  Werner is a young boy with great talent in electronics who grows up in the early years of the Nazi regime.   He learns his trade from finding old radio parts and an old electronics/math textbook, and he teaches himself how to build radios.  He and his sister spend many late evenings in their orphanage listening to signals that they pick up - many from the west, including signals from an old man who broadcasts stories and music.

Werner is chosen for a select boarding school for training Nazi officers, even though he is a small boy, because of his ability to trace radio signals.  He leaves behind at the orphanage his younger sister, Jutta, a girl of keen insight into the wrongness of the Reich, and he spends many nights trying to reconcile what he is doing with the deep-in-his-heart knowledge that his sister is right.

The other part of the story is about Marie-Laure, a blind French girl who lives with her father, who is responsible for all the keys in a huge national French museum.  Marie-Laure and her father are forced to flee when the Nazis enter Paris, and they go to the home of an eccentric uncle who lives in Saint-Malo, a near-island on the coast of France, in a home that is as eccentric as the uncle is - five stories high and very narrow. Uncle lives on the fifth floor and never goes outside.

These two young people live completely separate lives, until near the end of the war, when their lives cross for twenty-four very important hours.

The format, very effective, is to intersperse a short chapter about Werner with another short chapter about Marie-Laure.

The other plot in this book involves a mysterious rare gemstone that was held at the museum, and a German officer whose job is to find that stone. (This story also relates to that of Marie-Laure.)  So short chapters about that are also included from time to time.

I had seen several reviews written by people who said they could not put this book down.  I could see why.  The stories are gripping.

The book is about war, and awful things happened in war.  So some awful things are written about in this book.  A few usages of bad language are included.  However - nothing is gratuitous (in my opinion) and nothing is too explicit.

For a mature reader, who likes well-constructed imagery, and who is not afraid to see from the inside how horrible regimes can develop, this is an outstanding book.