All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.  It wasn’t the passionate read of six-hour sessions because you just can’t put it down.  So I’m asking myself the question, “Why was it so good?”  It’s not just me, many other readers whose opinion I value thought it was a “best recent read”.

Of course there was the dramatic crescendo of the ending and since that was at the end it sticks with us.  You couldn’t help but shed a tear, even though it was a predictable ending.

I think we are in a new era of writing about the last century.

In the era surrounding WW-II, the 30’s, 40-s, and 50’s there was the John Gunther type of book Inside Europe, a study of the politics of nations, winding up with William Shirer’s, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  Next came the good guys, bad guys’ era with John Wayne heroes.  We’ve just finished a quarter century of le Carré type espionage and spy novels where the whole cast ensemble are bad guys; there are no good guys.  Now they’ve all died off. 

We have entered the era of retrospectives on 20^th century history: no politics, no heroes or villains.  It is pleasant reading.  It is stories about little people, commoners.  That is why I think this book has such broad appeal.  Now to some of the specifics:

·           Doerr’s style of multiple scene slices by time and venue was brilliantly handled.  For me, it was just the right mixture.  I think that the shortness of the shifts, 1-3 pages, helped to make this work.

·           Characterization achieved efficient balance.  There was no glut of minor characters; they conveniently crossed the stage and exited.  But we got to know and understand the children.  Werner was deeply-layered and natural; possible based on the author himself.  Making him an orphan was a good literary device; no need to delve into parentage.  The girl, Marie-Laure, is endearing because of her perseverance, but painted through the reflected visions of her father and grand-uncle.  The blindness was a perfect device for her, because, like a magic trick, it diverted attention away from the author going too deeply into a teenage girl’s character.  Another thing that makes these characters work is the ages: a ten year story, from 6 to 16.

·           There is the illusion of minute detail on any number of subjects in the children’s lives.  We readers don’t really want this to be a text on radio electronics, nor tide pool crustacean life.  But we like to think we have learned something and we enjoy the detail writing about things that stir passions like puzzles, museums, and Jules Verne.

·           I theorize that we are now in an age of a kinder, gentler world view of the last century.  I could make similar comments about the author, Phillip Kerr, who has written ten novels following the career of Bernie Gunther over thirty years (1930-1960) from Berlin police Lieutenant to private eye.