All The Light We Cannot See Review

All The Light We Cannot See Review
By Alexis Mercer

“You’re reading THAT book?” said my sister with wide eyes and actual shock in her voice.
“What? Why? What’s wrong with it?” I replied.
“Well, uh, yah, it’s just not your kind of book,” she said, while trying to backtrack after knowing I wasn’t kidding.
“What’s my kind of book?” I asked, offended.
“Oh, it’s going to be great. I have just heard that it’s realistically terrifying.”
“......silence……”
“Great.”

It was after this exchange with my well-intentioned sister that I shelved the book for a later date. Maybe I wasn’t ready for it.

But after a series of books that were entertaining but lacking in depth, I decided the time had come. I was going to stretch my limits and venture into a book that might be outside my comfort zone.

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr turned out to be nothing short of perfection.

Magical.

Enchanting.

Thought-provoking.

Riveting.

I so far stretched my limits that I became a new person after reading this novel. My mind was entranced.

The words of the book brought me to another world. Another time. Another place. I felt what the characters were feeling. I dreamed with them, cried with them, ached with them.

Five hundred and thirty pages are in the hardcover version I had acquired. Most of the pages I stopped to re-read sentences. Not because those sentences were hard to understand. But because there was so much beauty in them that I longed for the words to seep into my brain another time before letting them go.

The story itself was not easy. I most definitely found myself stretched beyond the limit of comfort. And it was in that stretching that I grew.

The tale is of two young people beginning in 1940:  Marie Laure, a blind girl from Paris, and Werner, an orphan growing up in Germany. Their stories are told separately, and yet from the very beginning I knew they would collide with the force of two trains at full speed.

Only once every great while do I read a novel I feel changes me forever. All The Light We Cannot See in one of the few. If you haven’t read it yet, find yourself a copy and settle in for a tale that won't soon leave you.