BOOK REPORT
“ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE BY ANTHONY DOERR”
PLOT SUMMARY
Mary –Laure LeBlanc is a girl aged six years who lives with her father in Paris. Her father is a locksmith at a museum in Paris. He constructs a model to resemble their neighborhood to help her to visualize the surrounding. Over time, she hears stories of the Sea of Flames hidden in the Museum, which is said to bring immortality and endless misfortunes to the people living near the owner. The only way to stop the curse is to return the stone to the ocean, the rightful owner.
Werner Pfennig is an eight-year-old orphan from Germany hailing from Zollverein. Wenner is naturally bright with exceptional skills for repairing radios. Together with his sister Jutta, they find a broken communication and uses it to listen to science and music programs transmitted across Europe. Germans invade France in the year 1940 forcing Marie-Laure and her father to flee to Saint-Malolo. They take refuge with her uncle Etienne. Etienne spent his lifetime broadcasting old records of his late brother.
Marie-Laure is unaware that her father is entrusted with the task of protecting the original gem by the Museum. Months later, her father is arrested while still building a model town for Marie- Laure. They do not hear from her again, and she is forced to stay with Etienne and his long maid iManec. Meanwhile, Reinhold, a Nazi gemologist, begins the search for the Sea of flames to search for the ongoing immorality. This search is to save himself from death by cancer. He manages to retrieve every fake but is amazed by the real stone.
Werner’s adorable skills enable him to find a job teaching Nazi values in a boarding school at the National Political Institute of Education in Schulpforta. Wenner has a charming personality for obedience efficiency in technical work. People try to put him out of school by wrongly adjusting his age. He is later transferred to Wehrmacht to track unauthorized enemy signals with the help of Volkheimer, a soldier from Schulpforta.
In his line of duty, a young girl and her mother are killed for allegedly tracking a signal. He becomes demoralized with his job, and Madame Manec comes to support the to point of success, but sadly she falls ill and dies. Marie-Laure and Etienne continue with her efforts to spread secret messages together with Piano recordings. As the search continues, she realizes that her crew found Etienne’s no legit and decides not to disclose the location.
As the war reaches the climax, Wenner is trapped under a pile of rubble. He starves with no food or water for quite a several days. The only thing he does is listen to Marie-Laure radio broadcasts. During this time, she finds the real diamond from the models of Etienne’s house. Wenner manages to escape. He goes to Etienne’s house, where he finds Rumpel trying to take over the jewel. Werner kills him and heads to meet the hiding Marie-Laure, who had gone to keep the stone safe.
Only together for a short time, they fall in love and flee from Saint-Malo. Marie-Laure returns the stone to the ocean part ways with Wenner, who later falls ill. Just as he begins to recover, he steps on a German Landmine is instantly killed. Thirty years down the line, Volkheimer looks for Jutta to give her the model house which contained the Sea of flames and tells that Wenner was possibly in love.
Jutta relocates to France with her son Max where she comes into contact with Marie-Laure in Paris. Marie-Laure works as a marine biologist in a museum. Marie- Laure uncovers the model and finds a key which she uses to open the cave. The story comes to an end with Marie-Laure aged 86 years walking along the streets of Paris, where she grew up alongside her grandson Michel.
Generally, I Like this book as it brings a clear picture of the war stories I read while growing up and how German soldiers were evil. The story also reveals a narrative of a disabled girl but has impeccable skills than many adults around her. More so, I suggest the humanity of both Werner and Marie-Laure to propose more complex traits of heroes since the memories of the second world war seem to disappear from our minds.