All the Light We Cannot See

I recently finished All the Light We Cannot See  by Anthony Doerr.  I browsed some of the reviews on Amazon because I was curious if readers had the same reaction I had to the last parts of the book.  Mostly they did. I’ll get to that later.


I was a bit surprised how many people negatively commented on the structure of the book. Maybe because I am a fast reader and finished the book in 1 ½ days the author’s practice of moving around back and forth in time rather than a straight timeline wasn’t as confusing as it would be for someone reading the book over many weeks. I was alert to the shifts and kept up. I did feel just as I was getting interested in one child’s story, I was yanked away to the other child. 


It seems to me that those who were most disappointed in the book were unable to see or appreciate how the detailed descriptive narrative underscored the contrasts between light and darkness in human character. The radio broadcasts which tied Werner’s and Marie-Laure’s parallel stories together symbolize more than electronic particles going unseen through the atmosphere.  It is part of the whole motif between light and dark, evil and good.


We have a blind girl who cannot literally see light but is acutely aware of light in the human spirit. The seeing boy through the brainwashing and manipulation of his Nazi trainers loses most of his ability to see the moral light. Or maybe it is fear of the mine pits that keeps him from acknowledging what he knows in his gut is happening. The darkness takes over and clouds his vision of right and wrong. The radio technology he is developing could be used to transmit facts, music, connection like he heard as a child. Instead it is used to hunt down and exterminate Resisters using their own radios.  Werner and his cohort Volkheimer rationalize that it is just math and science they work on, free of morality. They are not the ones who choose how it is to be used; they simply obey their masters. Even when they have seen how the Nazi trainers have created evil at the school through manipulation, they turn away from personal responsibility. Werner’s sister Jutta and fellow student Frederick are blunt reminders there is moral choice. The price may be high, but there are those who do see and follow the light. 


The rich heaping up of details serves not only to help us feel we are part of the scene, but drives home the lesson that people and things both bad and good feed the soul and put us on paths never envisioned.


The parallel stories build up to the meeting of Werner and Marie-Laure in St. Malo. In some ways it seems anticlimactic because although the two realize a deep connection, the encounter is so brief. But it is one of the most important parts of the book. Werner is given the opportunity to confront evil and finally do the right thing. Lightness wins over darkness.


Mr. Doerr would have done well to end the book shortly after Marie-Laure and Werner part ways. The end of Werner’s story is disappointing. The information about Marie-Laure’s post-war life keeps us from wondering what happened to her but could have been handled better. It is flat and uninspiring.


Perhaps the reintroduction of the little carved wooden house is meant to reinforce the redemption of Werner, but is it necessary? In a dull and contrived way it brings Jutta and Volkheimer back into the book; but it raises dangling questions about the diamond that we thought were settled in the grotto. The last portions of the book are flat and so unlike the rest of the work. They detract from the excellent though dark recounting of how war affects two young people on opposing sides, mostly told from their own perspectives.