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

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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AMAZON | BOOK DEPOSITORY

Stones are just stones and rain is just rain and misfortune is just bad luck.

Truthfully I don't know what to write in my review here for this book. I've never met a book like this ㅡthat telling a story set on long time ago during World War II; that telling every details of the war, the cities, the grief, the mess, the survivors; that telling a lot of agonies but didn't bothering; that telling very little romance yet I could sense the feeling about it is so strong. I'd hesitated several times before I decided to give this book a try. I'd read the blurb over and over again to convince myself that this book had nothing I ever wanted to read on a book. But the minute I'd met Marie-Laure, I'd fallen in love with this book. I'd become so obsessed over this book. On the first day of reading, I had to stop myself on chapter 48 because if I kept going I might skip my sleep. And today ㅡwhich is the day I finished the rest of the book in one sittingㅡ I skipped breakfast and lunch and only stopped five times to drink water because I was so eager to find the ending, yet in the same time I didn't want it to end soon.

All the Light We Cannot See is a really beautiful read. When the story began, it began with a simple background of each roles but somewhere raised a curiosity for the readers. In the middle, the feelings were all mixed up that several times I had to remind myself to exhale and the next time I felt grief, pity, and even smiled on certain parts. But when the story came to an end, it felt like the curtain closed as I turned the last page of the book, leaving me with a content feeling and mind full of imagination and yet it all seemed far and settled more as memories than a feeling. The ending not only concluded the story, but my feelings as well. And I'm glad for that because sometimes it felt uncomfy when the gloomy feeling caused by reading a book haunting you to sleep. But this book did a different thing. It offered a story full of complex situations, driving emotions up and down and in the end it settled down slowly and steady to a calm end, just like a cooling session. And now that I finished the book, I don't really feel sad or happy but more like feeling content in mind.
It is really genius to bring up the focus on these two main character, Marie-Laure and Werner in the middle of the war. How two people with different nations and a very short encounter yet had formed a very tight bound and... damn if it's not touching for anyone who reads this!
The words that Mr. Anthony had chosen were all so simple yet formed very beautiful and meaningful sentences. The metaphors and analogies he made are brilliance. And because I am a romance-freak, I noticed these several sentences which was formed ordinarily yet damn touching and heart-melting:

A shell screams over the house. He thinks: I only want to sit here with her for a thousand hours.

The window glows. The slow sandy light of dawn permeates the room. Everything transient and aching; everything tentative. To be here, in this room, high in this house, out of the cellar, with her: it is like medicine.

Her voice like a bright, clear window of sky. Her face a field of freckles. He thinks: I don’t want to let you go.

It was so simple and the farthest that a boy could think of about a girl who he just met less than a day yet it showed enough what his heart felt to her. Good God...

Well, I guess it will be a while until I will start reading a book again (because my poor eyes really need to rest right now as I write this review right after I finished the book) but as I said it before, I feel content to have read this deeply moving and beautiful book :)

Love, read, and review,

Cynthia D.