This is the third book I’ve read recently about World War II and the pillaging and looting of Europe by the Germans. The others were the nonfiction Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel and the women’s fiction The Last Masterpiece by Laura Spinelli. Each of them takes a different tack on the subject. Monuments Men is a wide-ranging factual look at the role of the MFAA (Monuments, Fine Art, and Archives) division of the Allied Forces in their attempts to return looted artwork to the appropriate countries. The Last Masterpiece is told in two points of view, focusing on the two primary female characters, a German photographer and an American stenographer, who, though on opposite sides of the war, share a common goal. All the Light We Cannot See is a tighter view of the war than Monuments Men and somewhat wider in point of view than The Last Masterpiece, focusing less on the art and more on interpersonal relationships. I admit I read All the Light We Cannot See prior to seeing the Netflix limited series and ended up feeling the two jarringly different.
All the Light We Cannot See deals with Marie-Laure and her father, the locksmith of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. When she goes blind, her father becomes her eyes and teaches her about the world through touch. When Paris is taken by the Nazis, Marie-Laure and her father flee to family in Saint-Malo, carrying the museum’s most famous artifact, a legendary jewel. The other major character is an orphaned German boy, Werner, who is taken early into the German army because of his genius with radios. He spends the war tracking down illegal radio transmissions, and then his team kills the broadcasters. Their stories intersect when Werner is sent to track down an illegal radio in the vicinity of Saint-Malo. A third character is Sgt Major Reinhold von Rumpel, a gem appraiser drafted by the Reich to examine pillaged jewels. He has an added reason for seeking the jewel Marie-Laure’s father carried from the museum: he believes in its ability to make its owner immortal.
The prose here is delightful, tender. Doerr does a wonderful job of capturing Marie-Laure’s blindness and her compensations for the loss of her vision as well as her father’s love for her and his desire to show her how being blind doesn’t have to inhibit her living.
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All the Light We Cannot See(Scribner, January 1, 2014) is available through:
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You can read my reviews of Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel here and The Last Masterpiece by Laura Spinelli here.
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