| |
1 |
All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel
Author:
Doerr, Anthony
|
| |
|
Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
Demand: High
|
LC: PS3604.O
|
|
ISBN-13: 9781476746586
LCCN: 2013034107
Imprint: Scribner
|
|
Pub Date: 05/06/2014
Availability: Available
List: $32.50
|
| |
Hardcover
|
|
|
Physical Description:
|
531 pages ; 24 cm
H 9",
W 6",
D 1.7",
1.49 lbs.
|
|
LC Series:
|
|
|
Brodart Sources:
|
Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
|
|
Bibliographies:
|
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction Finalists
Booklist High-Demand Hot List
Fiction Core Collection, 18th ed.
Fiction Core Collection, 19th ed.
Fiction Core Collection, 20th ed.
Library Journal Bestsellers
Los Angeles Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers: Adult Fiction
Publishers Weekly Bestsellers
Texas Lariate Reading List
|
|
Awards:
|
Adult Notable Books, ALA
Alex Awards
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction Winners
Booklist Editors Choice
Booklist Starred Reviews
Booklist Top of the List
Indies Choice/E.B. White Read-Aloud Book Award Winners and Honors
Kirkus Best Books
Kirkus Starred Reviews
Library Journal Best Books
Library Journal Starred Reviews
New York Times Notable Books
Publishers Weekly Starred Reviews
Pulitzer Prize Winners
School Library Journal Best Adult Books for High School Students
VOYA's 5Q Picks
|
|
Starred Reviews:
|
Booklist
Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
Publishers Weekly
~VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates Magazine - Retired Journal)
|
|
TIPS Subjects:
|
Historical Fiction
|
|
BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Historical / 20th Century / World War II & Holocaust
FICTION / Media Tie-In
|
|
LC Subjects:
|
Blind, Fiction
FICTION / General
FICTION / Historical
FICTION / Literary
France, History, German occupation, 1940-1945, Fiction
Historical fiction
Saint-Malo (France), Fiction
World War, 1939-1945, Youth, France, Fiction
World War, 1939-1945, Youth, Germany, Fiction
|
|
SEARS Subjects: |
Blind
France, History, German occupation, 1940-1945, Fiction
Historical fiction
Saint-Malo (France), Fiction
World War, 1939-1945, Fiction
|
|
Reading Programs: |
Accelerated Reader Level:
6.2
,
Points: 21.0
Lexile Level:
880
Reading Counts Level:
5.7
,
Points: 29.0
|
|
|
| |
| Annotations |
| Publisher Annotations | 02/04/2014 |
| From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel 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 within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr 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 his most ambitious and dazzling work. |
|
| Starred Reviews: |
| Booklist | 04/15/2014 |
| A novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned, Doerr's magnificently drawn story seems at once spacious and tightly composed. It rests, historically, during the occupation of France during WWII, but brief chapters told in alternating voices give the overall--and long--narrative a swift movement through time and events. We have two main characters, each one on opposite sides in the conflagration that is destroying Europe. Marie-Louise is a sightless girl who lived with her father in Paris before the occupation; he was a master locksmith for the Museum of Natural History. When German forces necessitate abandonment of the city, Marie-Louise's father, taking with him the museum's greatest treasure, removes himself and his daughter and eventually arrives at his uncle's house in the coastal city of Saint-Malo. Young German soldier Werner is sent to Saint-Malo to track Resistance activity there, and eventually, and inevitably, Marie-Louise's and Werner's paths cross. It is through their individual and intertwined tales that Doerr masterfully and knowledgeably re-creates the deprived civilian conditions of war-torn France and the strictly controlled lives of the military occupiers.High-Demand Backstory: A multipronged marketing campaign will make the author's many fans aware of his newest book, and extensive review coverage is bound to enlist many new fans. Hooper, Brad. 544p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
|
| Kirkus Reviews | 03/15/2014 |
| Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect. In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She's taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure's father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children's House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he's put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she's broadcasting is innocent--she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure's father's having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major. Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters. 448pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
|
| Library Journal | 02/01/2014 |
| Shifting among multiple viewpoints but focusing mostly on blind French teenager Marie-Laure and Werner, a brilliant German soldier just a few years older than she, this novel has the physical and emotional heft of a masterpiece. The main protagonists are brave, sensitive, and intellectually curious, and in another time they might have been a couple. But they are on opposite sides of the horrors of World War II, and their fates ultimately collide in connection with the radio--a means of resistance for the Allies and just one more avenue of annihilation for the Nazis. Set mostly in the final year of the war but moving back to the 1930s and forward to the present, the novel presents two characters so interesting and sympathetic that readers will keep turning the pages hoping for an impossibly happy ending. Marie-Laure and Werner both suffer crushing losses and struggle to survive with dignity amid Hitler's swath of cruelty and destruction. VERDICT Doerr (The Shell Collector) has received multiple honors for his fiction, including four O. Henry Prizes and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award. His latest is highly recommended for fans of Michael Ondaatje's similarly haunting The English Patient. Evelyn Beck, Piedmont Technical Coll., Greenwood, SC. 544p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
|
| Publishers Weekly | 02/17/2014 |
| In 1944, the U.S. Air Force bombed the Nazi-occupied French coastal town of St. Malo. Doerr (Memory Wall) starts his story just before the bombing, then goes back to 1934 to describe two childhoods: those of Werner and Marie-Laure. We meet Werner as a tow-headed German orphan whose math skills earn him a place in an elite Nazi training school--saving him from a life in the mines, but forcing him to continually choose between opportunity and morality. Marie-Laure is blind and grows up in Paris, where her father is a locksmith for the Museum of Natural History, until the fall of Paris forces them to St. Malo, the home of Marie-Laure's eccentric great-uncle, who, along with his longtime housekeeper, joins the Resistance. Doerr throws in a possibly cursed sapphire and the Nazi gemologist searching for it, and weaves in radio, German propaganda, coded partisan messages, scientific facts, and Jules Verne. Eventually, the bombs fall, and the characters' paths converge, before diverging in the long aftermath that is the rest of the 20th century. If a book's success can be measured by its ability to move readers and the number of memorable characters it has, Story Prize-winner Doerr's novel triumphs on both counts. Along the way, he convinces readers that new stories can still be told about this well-trod period, and that war--despite its desperation, cruelty, and harrowing moral choices--cannot negate the pleasures of the world. (May). 544p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
|
| ~VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates Magazine - Retired Journal) | 10/01/2014 |
| 5Q 4P A/YA. This is a beautiful book. Two children, a book-loving blind girl from Paris and a gifted orphan boy from Germany, move in alternate chapters through the 1930s into World War II. After her father's arrest, Marie-Laure and her great-uncle join the Resistance in Saint-Malo. In 1944, Werner, by now a radio expert, homes in on their secret radio transmissions, and the two teens meet for the only time. Marie-Laure has suffered; Werner has helped inflict suffering but is haunted by doubt. They need each other. The chapters are short; the quick changes in point of view require the reader to hold two worlds in focus, awkwardly at first, then more smoothly as one comes to care about both protagonists. Simple sentences and present-tense narration keep the reader involved. Marie-Laure has sounds, smells, vividly imagined colors, two Verne novels in Braille, and a Breton beach throbbing with sea life to touch. For Werner, the sea off Saint-Malo is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, like a medicine to heal guilt. Only once does Doerr show a personified Death considering which victims to reap, a hallmark of Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief (Knopf, 2006/VOYA June 2006). Even so, Marie-Laure could easily step into the earlier book to befriend Liesel. Both are resilient, reading novels aloud during air raids, comforting others. Teens in both novels emerge from innocence into Nazi brutality and grope their way to answering the poignant question Marie-Laure asks her great-uncle, "But we are the good guys, aren't we?"--Katherine Noone. 544p. VOICE OF YOUTH ADVOCATES, c2014. |
|
| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 12/16/2014 |
| In Anthony Doerr's riveting novel, All the Light We Cannot See, we meet 16-year-old blind girl Marie-Laure and 17-year-old Nazi soldier Werner as they are hunkered down in separate corners of the French seaside town of Saint-Malo during the American liberation of the Nazi occupied city. Through alternating chapters that jump back and forth in time between 1934 and 1944, Doerr beautifully tells the story of these two children, doomed by the war, and destined to meet. In 1934, 6-year-old Marie-Laure loses her sight from a degenerative condition. Although her mother died in childbirth, her doting papa is relentless in helping Marie-Laure relearn her world. The master locksmith at Paris' Natural History Museum, Daniel LeBlanc is also an exceptional miniaturist and puzzle maker. He creates a miniature version of the Paris block they live on, complete with sidewalks and street lamps. He guides her on the walk to and from the museum every day until one day, two years later, Marie-Laure is able to guide him. Her father's love and the confidence he gave her sustains Marie-Laure once she is forced to become self-sufficient. At the same time, in a coal-mining complex in near Essex, Germany, Werner lives with his sister, Jutta, in an orphanage. Curious Werner is clearly a gifted child and peppers the benevolent head of the orphanage, Frau Elena, with continuous streams of questions. One day, Werner comes across a discarded radio. It takes him three weeks, but he finally gets the spool of wires to pick up a station playing music. Six years later, Werner's talent with radios captures the attention of a high-ranking mining official. And it's he who writes a letter of recommendation for Werner for a coveted spot in the most prestigious SS school, saving him from the fate of his father, who died working in the coal mines, and simultaneously sealing his fate as a Nazi child soldier. The reader travels both backward and forward through these characters lives as they move closer and closer to each other until they are finally in the same place at the same time. Doerr does a brilliant job of weaving this kind of six degrees of separation story together so that the reader can't even guess at the links until they are slowly revealed. The prose is simple and lyrical. It perfectly captures the innocence of youth and then, later, the loss of it. Each short chapter overflows with the intense emotions of the time and is packed with enough action to make the novel an unlikely, gripping page-turner. A National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is easily one of the best books of the year and not to be missed. BookPageXTRA Online Review. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
|
| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 11/11/2013 |
| Blind since six, Marie-Laure is compelled to flee Paris with her father when the Germans march in during World War II; they end up living with Marie-Laure's great-uncle in Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast. Meanwhile, orphaned German boy Werner proves to be a whiz with radios, which leads him to an exclusive military school and, eventually, to tracking the Resistance. It's not long before he lands in Saint-Malo, crossing wires with Marie-Laure. Doerr has been publishing faultlessly crafted fiction since the release of The Shell Collector over a decade ago, and he's got multiple prizes (including the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award) to prove it. Another prize winner?. 448p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
|
9781476746586,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 05/11/2014 |
|
|
|