Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book, National Book Award finalist, more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller 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 in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. 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, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, 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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Sexual Content - 2/5
2/5
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Violence - 3/5
3/5
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Language - 3/5
3/5
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Drugs and Alcohol - 1/5
1/5
Summary
From: Isaac Scego
Book Title: All the Light We Cannot See
Book Author: Anthony Doerr
What do you like about this book:
Summery::
Pulitzer award-winning novel All the Light We Cannot See is a quite controversial for me. There's so much to love here—compelling characters, poignant style, mesmerizing settings and an elegantly crafted story. Anthony Doerr paints such beautiful pictures of talent and fighting against evil, and such ugly pictures of selfishness and brokenness—yet even those manage to be beautiful. It is both heartbreaking and inspiring. Lovely and ugly.
Despite all these things, it is also slow, and sometimes tediously executed. And some crude language will also be a subtracting factor for some. Doerr is a talented novelist with much to say, however not knowing the best way to say it. This book undoubtedly deserves the prestigious honor it won, but it's definitely not for everyone.
Sexual Content::
Stories are told of Germans impregnating every school girl they see. And this is used to taunt Marie-Laure—a boy tells her that they like blind girls best and they will do nasty things to her. This fear becomes a running source of tension throughout the novel. A few comments are made about prostitutes. When being examined, Werner's privates are measured and someone comments about "pollinating" a girl without hesitation. Comments from Werner's fellow soldiers include vulgar (and degrading) allusions to sex acts, using crude words for the female genitalia, and masturbation.
Violent Content::
A man is said to have cut a female priest's tongue out and there are other rumors of death in various fashions, including suicide. Several moments describe bombings and detailed destruction of buildings and streets. People are wounded and bloodied (human limbs are implied to be strewn in the streets). Multiple boys are injured when jumping from tall heights, one described violently as he breaks multiple bones. A child is said to have been run over by a truck (not described, but merely mentioned). A fifteen-year-old boy is beaten brutally by a stiff hose, bloodied badly, and when a house is destroyed, soldiers march inside to find dead and headless corpses lying in pools of blood. Prisoners are forced to strip down in the snowy weather and turn over their clothes to greedy Germans and a character has visions of many dead infants piled on top of one another.
As a result of the war, people are said to smash birds with bricks for soup, eat their own pets, be run over by military vehicles, and trampled under rushing crowds. A train is even lined with dead human corpses for cover. A man is tortured by being tied to a pole and doused with freezing water and a German sergeant is said to chop off Russian fingers and smoke them in a pipe. Inside an infirmary, a bed is soaked in blood. Some other descriptions can get pretty bloody, including one where someone imagines blood flooding a room.
Language::
Four f-words. Five uses of the s-word and two of d--n (one paired with God). Three misuses of Jesus' name and two of God's name. "P--sy" is used as a synonym for wimp. A crude comment is made.
Drug/Alcohol Content::
People smoke on a few occasions. A couple is said to get drunk and there are other references to drunkenness.
Cleanliness:: 2.5/5
| R | Disturbing violent content and language, including some sexual references
Your ratings of the level of sex, violence, language and drug/alcohol use on a scale of 1-5.
Sex:2
Violence:3
Language:3
Drug/Alcohol use:1