What a difference each person makes

I've changed my two books at a time strategy this week because I really want to finish the novel I'm reading.  It is such a page turner, and I find myself distracted and thinking about it when I try to pick up anything else.  I'll return to my usual goal of two books every two weeks with a nonfiction focus after I finish this one.

All the Light We Cannot See comes from within other people, the light they carry, the light they bring to us through small actions and unintended grace.  That's one meaning of this lovely title for this lovely book.  If you consider reading it, you will note the length and possibly be deterred from reading it, but if you let yourself follow each character, particularly the two main characters, each living a quiet, desperate life holding on to little shreds of hope through memory and observation, you will find that the book unfolds quickly, pulling you inevitably toward the tragic destruction of a seaside town in France.

Wars are filled with stories of people in far away places who made an impact on the action of the war out of both national pride and stubborn survival instincts, and in Saint Malo, the French resistance had a small band of warriors sharing messages and enacting rebellion against the invading Nazis by whatever meager methods they could devise. Here, Marie-Laure brings her ailing uncle, a man still suffering the emotional trauma from World War I, back to life.  And here Werner, a young German soldier interested in science and numbers and the magic of sound, becomes a traitor to his forces in an effort to shield people he has never met.  I don't want to give away too much, because so much happens to reach the point where Werner and Marie-Laure both end up in this little village taken hostage by Hitler's desperate attempt to hold ground in Europe. The plot includes Werner's nature-loving friend who suffers under the burden of becoming a soldier, Marie-Laure's father, whose bravery stems from absolute love for his daughter, and an obsessed German officer searching for a mysterious diamond that he believes can save him from encroaching death.  But despite the war action and the suspense surrounding the diamond, the best moments of this book happen with subtlety.  

Werner, in particular, finds his courage throughout the book, and not in the way one would expect.  He plays a crucial role in the war, but not on the front lines as a soldier.  The Nazis find a way to use his talents for science as a weapon, and Werner comes to realize that bonds of national loyalty matter far less to him than personal bonds.  In one moment of urgency when he should be focused on fleeing, he offers this observation of a girl he is helping: "The girl sits very still in the corner and wraps his coat around her knees.  The way she tucks her ankle up against her bottom. The way her fingers flutter through the space around her.  Each a thing he hopes never to forget" (Doerr 469).  Anthony Doerr captures quiet moments like that over and over again throughout the book with simplicity that reveals the significance of such moments.  Werner wants to remember people, not heroics.  He is an observer by nature, but not in only a scientific way.  Unlike the stereotypical image of the detached scientist, Werner observes everyone with compassion and concern, and that concern is the light he has inside, the light we cannot see, but we can certainly feel in other people.

I highly recommend this book as a piece of historical fiction that offers a new perspective of World War II beyond the common Holocaust story.  Despite many tragic twists, by the end you will believe that there is goodness and light even in the darkest times.