4.5 stars ⭐

All the Light We Cannot See is a beautifully-written novel with truly harrowing content, and although its 500+-page length was daunting, those pages flew. It took me about 50 pages or so to ground myself--Doerr bounces between dual narratives, and the immediacy of his writing throws the reader directly into the midst of the characters' stories. But once I had my feet beneath me, it was glorious to watch the threads of narrative draw inexorably closer before tangling with one another forever.

I was a bit apprehensive that this book would play into the "good German" trope, but I think Doerr successfully avoids doing so through the young ages of his protagonists (one of whom of course is a young Nazi radioman). This isn't a story about a Nazi who wasn't all that bad; it's a story about a child who is drawn into the machinery of evil and who is ultimately broken by what he witnesses and what he participates in. There's a lot of consideration of what responsibility the characters (and we, the empathetic and thoughtful readers) have in the face of atrocity, and some of the most interesting sections to me demonstrate the differences between Werner being dragged along into war and Marie-Laure taking some control over her precarious and in many ways powerless situation to participate in the resistance. If anything, the critique of inaction in this book can be read as a dismantling of the "good German" trope.

I have a lot of respect for the restraint of Doerr's writing, and for how solid and well-crafted this book feels. The language is breath-taking but mostly unadorned, just finely tuned to the music of words playing well together, and he does not let himself tip into sentimentality. This is not a schmaltzy World War II romance where everyone gets a happy ending. It is ridiculous to think that the characters would live through that story and come out unhaunted. There are some hooks characters and readers don't get to be let off of, and Doerr seems to understand that.

I have one criticism that is a spoiler:

Spoiler

I dislike the scene in which Russian soldiers rape Jutta and the remaining girls from Children's House. It's written well, but it just feels unnecessary, like something that was plopped in there for "realism" and to give extra weight to why Jutta is scarred by the war. I think that living through privation, labor, starvation, and constant danger, and seeing her beloved brother used for a cause that she knows is wrong, are all ample reason without the rape scene.

I can already say that this is one of my favorites of the year.