I know I'm going to find this book hard to review. Up front, I'll say that I wasn't overly interested when this was chosen as the book club choice, firstly because it's just not something I'd usually be drawn to, and also because I have a well established history of not "getting" books that are literary prize winners. 

We are told the parallel stories of Marie-Laure, a blind French girl, and Werner, a German orphan who has a gift with electronics; radios in particular. We watch them grow up in the late 1930s, and then see the impact of WW2 on their lives. There's a little bit of a treasure hunt and a little bit of mystery, but all the while you're waiting for their stories to actually come together. You reach a point where it becomes fairly obvious how it's going to happen, and yet the story still moves on around them for a while longer. I found the denouement sweet, but far too late and far too brief. And what follows thereafter is just quite disappointing - it feels like the author went "meh... done with their story now...", shrugged his shoulders and couldn't find the energy to properly draw their stories together or to a satisfying conclusion. 

The chapters are VERY short; most of them are only a page or two. Coupling this with the shifting perspectives (for the most part you get one chapter of Marie and one chapter of Werner) and the jumping backwards and forwards in time, I found it very difficult to invest in either of the main characters - there was no chance to get at them with any depth! Generally, I'd say this is the book's biggest issue; I was not drawn to keep reading, or lose myself in the story.

However, the further I got into the book, the easier I found it to keep tines and events more aligned in my head. But overall the writing style is just too busy for me. It almost feels like it needed to be a duology; one book telling Marie's story, and another telling Werner's, with the conclusions mirroring each other.

I also felt that the premise behind the book (effectively the 'treasure hunt' element) was very thin. Most of the events could have happened without that catalyst anyway and it's not really kept central to the story except indirectly to cause our characters to come together. 

All of that being said... there is just something about the story that is inexplicably beautiful. It's not a particularly hard read - it's one of the first literary winners that I've actually finished - and I find myself genuinely struggling with how to rate it. I'm didn't hate it, but nor am I overwhelmed. I'm disappointed, and yet I can't say that it's a bad book. So, based on my own standard rating system and all of these jumbled up feelings, I've plumped for slap bang in the middle.