Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - All the Light We Cannot See

a good read with a lot to recommend it

pros:
- the characters were probably the best part, particularly Marie-Laure and Werner, and all the side characters of Jotta, Frau Elena, Etienne, etc. Even ones like Volkheimer were compelling. There was a lot of feeling behind each of them, their struggles of fear and whether to rebel or comply felt very human, and i never felt frustrated with them despite some of their mistakes or foibles.
- the plot was good too, it stayed tight and interesting throughout and I always wanted to know what would happen next. the idea for the diamond and the model city was clever and fresh, against some of the more familiar tropes of a war novel
- i liked the characters talking about their interests - Werner and Etienne's fascination with radios, Marie-Laure with her books and her snails, Jotta with her art, Volkheimer's music, even.
- the writing was excellent too, very poetic at times, especially on discussing nature. the loss of Frederick's mind felt the most poignant, because of the pointlessness of it, how he was such a sweet boy and a dreamer, and Werner's guilt of it
- the epilogues were good, satisfying because they weren't too sad or too unrealistic. the sense of the randomness of who survives and who doesn't was palpable
- I also liked that the idea of their being a curse on the Sea of Flames was never really confirmed or not, just left as a question of belief. it was more representative whether or not the characters kept the stone than what the stone actually was.
- also, the placing of a blind character centre stage and presenting her as brave, capable and important, was good to read. while it wasn't easy for her, there wasn't a huge amount of bullying or abelism she went through, which I think makes for a change. sometimes authors seem to include disabled characters only to make them suffer, to make everyone else feel better about not being disabled.

cons:
- somehow it just didn't touch me as much as some others, particularly Life after Life which I read recently. That really showed the horror of the war somehow, whereas this felt surface level? too much like tropes? I'm not sure.
- as lovely as it was when Marie-Laure and Werner finally met, I wish they'd had more time together
- perhaps Marie-Laure was a little too perfect, though that is the point of her I suppose. Werner sees her as the pure thing the men at his school talked of. saving her was him saving the last bit of innocent goodness
- the scene were Jotta, Fray Elena and the others were abruptly raped by the Russians felt.. gratuitous. the horror of it wasn't conveyed in the short segment and it felt like an add on, like the author thought - oh and rape must happen at some time in war, and stuck it in without any emotional lead up or conclusion.
- the shortness of each chapter or segment did frustrate me a bit, always chopping and changing. I also got confused between the times, not sure how Von Rubel had in one chapter crushed the model house and in the next, couldn't find it (one was in the Paris, the other in Saint-Malo)
- whilst I (as a non-disabled person) thought Marie-Lauren's disability was written well, I did think that for Etienne's 20years of claustrophobia to disappear just like that, because he loves Marie-Laure so much he just overcomes it, wasnt a great depiction.

all in all, a very good read, but not as emotionally poignant as it might have been (or else I'm just a bit numb rn)

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catherineduplessis's review against another edition

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dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I mostly rate the books I read according to how they make me feel right after I finish them.

That doesn’t mean I only like books that are funny and lighthearted, but I also like being intrigued, surprised, kept on my toes or at least being left with some kind of reflection or food for thoughts.

Well this book only made me feel depressed, sad and heartbroken.

It’s not a bad story. The imagery is beautifully written, but it just makes it even more heartbreaking.

The story is set during WWII. I knew it wasn’t going to be all rainbows and butterflies, but I was expecting a little more reflections.. maybe?

I had a glimpse of hope at page 400 (!), but nope, it became even sadder.

The last 30 pages are the most reflective ones of the whole 530 pages book, but they are still tainted with a dark cloud of death, loneliness and sadness.

Oh, and even if the chapters are very short, the pace is VERY slow. It’s like reading someone’s everyday lives in a very depressing time. There is no plot twist. Just a long slow series of moments in 2 different people’s life slowly becoming more and more lonely and depressing.

All this to say that this book didn’t make me feel good at all and quite the contrary, it put me in a reading slump. It took me a lot longer than I thought to read it because I always wanted to do something else rather than read more of it.

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lovelymisanthrope's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

I read this book as a buddy read with a friend.
This is not typically a book I would have gravitated towards because Historical Fiction does not traditionally call to me. However, I was very excited to give this one a try because I heard nothing but great things about it, and I thought it would be an excellent candidate as my first intentional Historical Fiction. What made this book so approachable was that it was a story about how it is difficult to be human, and the characters happened to be living through WWII, rather than a story about WWII at the forefront. I also really loved the writing style. Anthony Doerr has such a lyrical way with words, and the metaphors were beautiful, but not heavy handed.

I really enjoyed the dual perspectives, especially because the characters were from two completely different worlds. I loved seeing their individual stories develop and being able to draw parallels between their struggles. Despite living very different lives, their stories really overlapped, which I think provided great commentary on how every person's life may be different, but we are all still so similar at the end of the day. Particularly, I enjoyed seeing Werner's character progression and how he got pulled into Hitler's Army. It is so easy to look at something from the outside and say how wrong it was, but I always find it interesting to see the state of mind of a person who gets drawn into something so deplorable. I also really appreciated his pushback and questioning of what he was experiencing and what he was being trained to do.
The story really dove into some difficult to read subjects, like Fredrick's story, but Anthony Doerr was able to handle these topics with grace. Nothing was "too much" to read, but the story was still so powerful.
I will say that the actual formatting of the book was sometimes difficult for me to enjoy. The chapters are short and alternate between Marie's and Werner's perspectives rapidly. Initially, this made it difficult for me to get into the story because just when I was finally starting to connect with one character's story, we switched to the other character's story. I did enjoy this towards the middle and end of the novel because it felt like we were getting both character's stories simultaneously.

Overall, I was very impressed by this novel, and I am excited to pick up more by Anthony Doerr.

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ellen_nicholson's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Gorgeous prose! A deep reflection on the human experience including our stories, free will and our interconnectedness. Definetly a bitter-sweet and emotional read. The only reasons that it didn't get 5 stars, was that the combination of a split perspective and a split timeline between chapters, became a little confusing in some parts. The ending also felt anticlimactic. Overall a new favourite.

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aaryan's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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ruthbeadle's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I think the prose in this is just top tier. It is so beautiful and flows almost lyrically. Another thing I really loved about this read is the theme of science. Both of the main characters approach science from different ways, and I loved the wonder and learning that it invoked in the writing. The characters were all well done, and I really loved everyone in Marie-Laure's storyline especially. There was just something missing to make this a five star read for me. I almost feel as if I have read a lot of very similar books. That is nothing against the novel, but I just found it dragging towards the middle a little bit. I think maybe several of the chapters could have been cut or tightened to make it flow. It was surprising to me how slow paced this was because the chapters were so short that normally I feel as if I am flying through a book.

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