All the Light We Cannot See

* COMING IN NOVEMBER AS A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES--from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti *

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge.

Doerr's "stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors" (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer "whose sentences never fail to thrill" (Los Angeles Times).

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Average rating: 7.81

59 RATINGS

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6 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

melbeesue
Oct 16, 2023
10/10 stars
From the beginning, I liked this book, and the parallel stories woven together. I was quite enchanted. Rarely in my opinion does a book live up to the hype when it gets big praise or gets on the best-seller list, but this book is an exception to that rule. This Pulitzer-prize fiction work is simply beautiful. I would highly recommend it.
Anonymous
Sep 18, 2023
10/10 stars
This is one of those books that breaks your heart to be finished with it. It has that rare combination of beautiful language, compelling characters, suspenseful plot, and creative perspective on life's big themes that's hard to find in one book. Love, love, love it !!
katiemahlady
Aug 01, 2023
6/10 stars
3.5 stars. Some parts did not sit well with me. It took me 200-250 pages to begin to be interested. I’m unsure if I liked the ending with regards to the Sea of Flames. Might be one that I need to sit on for a few days and update for later. I liked a lot of the side characters (Frederick, Madame Manec, Volkheimer, Marie’s father) and I think that being less attached to the main characters is what made it hard for me to get into it!
KikiStoneCreek
Jun 03, 2023
4/10 stars
I expected more of an interaction between the two main characters. Not as compelling a book as I expected from the reviews I had read.
E Clou
May 10, 2023
6/10 stars
I think this is the sort of book I would have enjoyed more some years ago, but I don't think it compares all that favorably to so many books that have given me so much more in terms of understanding truth, beauty, humans, joy, suffering, or language.

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