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All the Light We Cannot See

A Novel

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All the Light We Cannot See

By: Anthony Doerr
Narrated by: Zach Appelman
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About this listen

 Winner of the Audie Award for Fiction

*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti*

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book 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 near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he 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 a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times). 20th Century Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Movie, TV & Video Game Tie-Ins War & Military
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I was impressed by the care that Marie-Laure's father took of her building models of where the lived so she could find her way around, and later by the care that Etienne took of her. But she is an incredibly independent young blond lady. Werner start with the disadvantages of being an orphan, and the finds his feet at the techniy school, but then is forced to join thr horrors of war in Russia. That they meet is unlikely but inevitable.

Parallel lives across the past and present

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At first I wasn't sure about a man reading for Marie Laure, but he seamlessly moved between characters so subtly that it was immediately apparent he was someone else. He conveyed effortlessly the emotions of war. And the Clair de Lune at the end brought tears to my eyes. Loved this performance of the book and will listen to it again.

Even better than the book

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This book has a strong plot. Some segments I feel are a bit too long. The performance is pretty good but as a listener who speeks both french and german I really had a probleem with the often terrible pronunciation of namens and words. This isn't necessary.

could be better but still wort listening to

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I’m glad I listened to this narration as others were not as good and would have distracted from the delicate and moving story.

Beautiful story and well narrated

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Breathtakingly beautiful portrayal of the wonders of the universe and the mysteries of the human heart against the backdrop of WW2.
I loved the science and philosophy related through the enquiring minds of the young characters who are, at heart, innocent and wise enough to reject narrow hatred and xenophobia. Doerr’s language is astonishing: he conducts an orchestra of words that from beginning to end convey the ‘drunkenness of things being various’ (to quote Louis MacNeice) and illustrate the extraordinary multiplicity of the universe and the enigma of existence. A GREAT read/listen. Loved Appelmans’s reading.

Astonishingly beautiful writing.

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