All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
Scribner
It won the Pulitzer. Was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Spent 118 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. Wiser readers than I have written more eloquently about Anthony Doerr’s magnificent All the Light We Cannot See, so there’s no reason to write what you can read elsewhere, like here and here. But it’s a World War II novel that I’ll long remember, and not just for the beautiful writing. Here’s why.
Doerr showed us characters who are usually vilified–Nazis–as people who loved and sacrificed and suffered. Werner Pfennig wasn’t one-dimensional. He had dreams, and the Nazis recognized his gifts and provided him with a means to develop them. He had doubts, but time and place carried him into waters he had no power to fight against. Werner used the cards dealt him, but he wasn’t a player.
And so I can come to better understand the ones who have been labeled our enemies today. Most Americans with open hearts already acknowledge that it’s not Muslims we should condemn, but the regimes that promote terrorism and distort Islam. But in coming to know Werner Pfennig, I must acknowledge that there are young Muslim men and women who, even while seeming to accept (who knows, maybe even carry out) violent acts of terrorism, are also just cogs in a wheel over which they have little control.
That’s powerful.
I’ll also remember how Marie-Laure continued on. Whatever her circumstances. While her world shrank for a time after her blindness and again after her escape to Saint-Malo, it eventually opened again for her–even wider. And when she suffered the deprivations of war, when her life was in danger, she persevered. Put one foot in front of the other. In the horrors of war, Marie-Laure found opportunity.
How spineless we twenty-first century Americans can be.
I’m guessing that those of you who have read All the Light also carry it with you long after reading. Those of you who haven’t read it yet, must.
This is my symphony 