The Little Things
May 19, 2015

I had been looking forward to reading “All The Light We Cannot See” (by Anthony Doerr) since sometime in December, so when my hold finally came in at the library (four months later!) I was really excited to sit down and read it! “All The Light We Cannot See” is a story about Marie-Laure, a young blind girl in WWII. She lives with her father near the Museum of Natural History in Paris where he works. Once the Nazis move in to occupy Paris, Marie-Laure and her father flee to the countryside, where they live with relatives. While this story is playing out, there is also a parallel story being told about young Werner, who lives in an orphanage with his sister in a mining town. He ends up being in the Nazi Youth, and this leads his story to overlap with Marie-Laure’s story.

All The Light We Cannot See

The first half was fairly slow and not so interesting, and even when I was 40% done, I wanted to quit (but thought there must be a reason it’s so popular so I kept on reading). The second half, to me, was MUCH more interesting and moved a bit faster, and that half held my attention. I gave it a 3.5/3.75 out of 5 stars on good reads.

As I like to do in my reviews, here are a few great gems from the book:

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”

“A real diamond is never perfect.”

There are, of course, other superb quotes, but I didn’t giveaway any bit of the plot line beyond what I wrote above, so I decided to leave it at that. Overall I’d definitely suggest the book, even though I couldn’t give it 4 or 5. As I’ve mentioned before, WWII is an era that I’m really interested in, so I liked that the book was set in this era.

*For other book reviews, check out my books/book reviews page.

Now it’s your turn to share! Do you have an era that you especially like reading or learning about?

←

4 responses to “All The Light We Cannot See Review”

  1. Rachel Denler says:
    May 19, 2015 at 10:19 am

    I’m reading it right now… I seriously LOVE it. I love the beautiful and descriptive writing of the story… amd the characters have so much depth.

    I majored in history in college with an emphasis in modern European history, and one of my favorite classes was called Hitler’s Germany. It was so fascinating to me! I felt, despite the fictional side of the story that it depicted pretty accurate descriptions of life in Europe during WWII.

    • littlethingscaroline@gmail.com says:
      May 19, 2015 at 7:34 pm

      If I couldn’t have done counseling, I would’ve wanted to be a history education major! I would’ve loved to take a class on Hitler’s Germany. I also felt that it did a good job of representing that era.

  2. Abby @ BackAtSquareZero says:
    May 19, 2015 at 7:51 pm

    One of my favorite historical books was Snowflower and the Secret fan which was from an era I knew nothing about.

    • littlethingscaroline@gmail.com says:
      May 19, 2015 at 8:45 pm

      I’ve never heard of that book! What era is it set in?