Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See was honestly really touching. It immediately drew me in, and there were many charming moments in the book that were heightened by Doerr’s descriptive power. There were two moments toward the end that either made me cry heavily or made me pause because what I had read touched me so deeply and I had to process before continuing. 

I really loved the format of incredibly short chapters (often a few pages at most), which mainly alternated between the POVs of Marie and Werner, a blind teenage girl living in occupied France and a German orphan who is inducted into the Hitler Youth. The short chapters proved to be a very good way of quickening the pace since the narrative itself spans over several years. I even liked the dual timeline, which isn’t always easy to pull off, but served to heighten the tension here. 

The development of the characters was strong, making me grow to care for them, and the supporting characters, particularly Marie’s father and great-uncle Etienne, were also very endearing. Some of the interactions between Marie and these two father figures are some of the most charming of the novel. However, I will say that although Doerr did get me to care for these characters, he did miss moments where he could’ve strengthened that bond and the characters’ personalities. For example, near the end, Volkheimer is describing the endearing minute mannerisms of Werner, which we see as memorable for Volkheimer but didn’t play out on the page in a memorable way. These characters aren’t my favorite in literature, but they did serve the story very well. 

Doerr’s atmospheric writing drew me in so that I felt like I could interact with it. He didn’t overdraw anything, and he knew where to pull back and when to reveal something. At times, the descriptions were simple but vivid: “Deliberately, almost lazily, the bombers shed altitude,” and I loved the majority of metaphors he used: “The war drops its question mark.” Other times, the descriptive metaphors could feel contrived, but I just passed over those and it didn’t really affect my impression of the novel as a whole. I can see how some might see this book as overwritten, though Doerr’s subtlety is where he excelled. I’m not sure if it was Doerr’s intention to tease the reader’s implicit biases, but in my mind, the Axis powers are the ones to cause destruction and terrorize Europe, but Doerr opens the book with American bombs dropping on a French village. Him opening the book like that immediately made me feel as if I was interacting with the novel, and that feeling persisted. My favorite part of the book was this interactivity created by the atmosphere of the book, which doesn’t feel like the right word because it brings to mind those “choose your experience” TV shows, but that’s the word I keep coming back to.