Book 18: All the Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

I just finished this book moments ago and, while I'm sure that I loved it, I'm not quite sure what can be said about it; after all, I usually hate books like this, books that so prize style that plot falls by the wayside, forgotten. Not so with All the Light We Cannot See, in which Anthony Doerr proves that high-minded, poetic prose is, in fact, quite compatible with a compelling plot, fully realized characters, and the numerous other qualities that make the best novels rise above the remainder and lodge themselves permanently in your brain. Immediately after finishing this book, I wanted to pick it up and begin all over again, to lose myself again in Doerr's haunting prose that so perfectly captures both the depth of the darkness that fell over Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and the small beams of hope, of humanity that somehow managed to shine through, however tenuous their gleam. All of the standard clichés apply here and words like "transcendent" wouldn't seem ill-applied to this novel, whose lyrical, haunting prose lingers in my mind. Every sentence is a poem, yet, unlike so many other books with similar aspirations, the words combine to conjure characters the reader can care about and a plot that provides the story with essential motion, particularly through the use of carefully weighted cliffhangers.

All the Light We Cannot See could go wrong in so many ways, but somehow Doerr manages to use every potential pitfall to his advantage. Though book's brief chapters quickly alternate between Nazi Germany and pre- and post-occupation France, the twin stories are easy to follow, anchored firmly by the use of integrated flash-forwards to (or perhaps flashbacks from?) a few pivotal days in August 1944, which provide the novel's emotional and thematic climax. Time progresses at uncertain intervals, racing along and stalling at the author's whim, but Doerr provides just the right amount of context to keep everything from running together. Perhaps Doerr's most remarkable feat is his successful deployment of present-tense prose; though the book begins in 1944 and looks backward and forward and backward again, every moment feels suspended in its own time- aided, no doubt, by the sheer poetic weight carried by every word. I cannot say for certain how the risky narrative choice achieves its desired effect, but somehow the tense of urgency slows this story down and allows readers to be present in every moment.

Fundamentally, what Doerr has done in All the Light We Cannot See is not new- it is a World War II story that places the fundamental question of morality at its beating center, looking deep into the heart of a Wehrmacht soldier's path to France and at a young Parisian refugee's experiences on the Brittany coast- but somehow every page bears revelations that somehow feel new despite decades of literature exploring and re-exploring seemingly every aspect of the war. The twin themes of light and darkness are further illuminated by Doerr's rather blunt decision to make one of his main characters medically blind and his far more subtle explorations of willful blindness; wisps of metaphor are planted throughout the book, stronger than suggestions but mercifully left for the reader to discover and parse. Even the book's more cliché elements become new again in Doerr's hands, and the remarkable coincidence that ties the book's disparate threads together seems perfectly suited for an era so adequately defined by the thoroughness of its chaos.

All the Light We Cannot See contains elements of this chaos but is grounded and ordered by its author's formidable literary talents. Even after trying to rationalize my complete and utter fascination with this book and the trance it held over me, I can't say what, exactly, makes the book succeed. Even an ending that feels drawn out and unnecessarily (if not quite garishly) sentimental against the backdrop of the rest of the novel failed to break the hold it had (and even still has) over me. At its core, the book is a war novel that is deeply concerned with human kindness but that overcomes the base sentimentality that often chokes similar forays into the redeemable aspects of the human spirit; it is a quick-moving story told at an elegiac pace, ruminating and demanding careful attention as it moves readers forward; it is the embodiment of what literary fiction aspires to be while remaining accessible; it asks readers to consider the big questions but is never for a moment condescending. And, most importantly, All the Light We Cannot See possesses that bit of literary magic that somehow obscures the source of its greatness.

Grade: A