Gripping tale

I really enjoyed this tale with WWII in the background. The narrator was excellent however I have one small quibble. As a French speaker I found the words said in French were awkward as the narrator clearly does not speak the language. The author presents a dramatic tale which is sometimes hard to listen too.

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An Amazing Book

I loved this narrative with its descriptions and setting. The characters were lovely and I wish it could have gone differently, lol. Prepare to get ruined with this book :)

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Mesmerizing!

A great tale, fantastic research, a wonderful backdrop to the lives of everyone who lived through the 40’s. Everyone lived such a story, very few could tell it that well. Thank you Anthony.

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Wonderful Story

Beautifully written descriptions of the characters, the locations and conversations between characters.

Overall plot, very good and enjoyed every minute.

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I enjoyed the story

I really enjoy a story that is told by going back and forth in time and unraveling as it goes. I think this book would of been more enjoyable had I read it, rather than audible. I found the quick jumps from person to person sometimes hard to follow, a lot of going back and listening to the previous chapter to catch the jump. But the last 1/3 of the book it all came together!

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Best book, but narration brings it down a bit

I re-read this book on Audible in 2017. I was not as into the narration for, while the narrator is good in English, his French is ATROCIOUS! The story requires someone who can read French. Another idea would be to have two or three voices, since the majority of the story is either Werner or Marie-Laure's voice/thoughts (and then maybe a narrator for the other parts?). I'd still say 4/5 stars, but would recommend the physical book to allow the full imagination needed for a masterpiece of fiction like this. Below is my review of the book itself from my previous review (which I gave 5/5 stars)

This book was one of the best I've ever read, both in terms of fiction or war. And that comes as little surprise.

Anthony Doerr's All the Light we Cannot See was over a decade in the making, so a lot of thought has gone into both the realism of the subject (Second World War Germany and France with large portions of the book dealing with natural science and disabilities) and also the feel or style. Doerr's writing is excellent, I felt I could understand and feel the thinking parts especially, capturing the mental images created in the confusion and uncertainty of a nation caught up in fanaticism just as much as in the head of a young blind girl.

The short sections do not detract from understanding more of the characters or following them closely, instead it perfectly fulfills what I can only assume was Doerr's goal: of linking and intertwining the two, sometimes three, occasionally four points of view together. It worked flawlessly in my mind and I never felt like it took anything away from one character.

This hints at, what I believe, is the actual point of the book. The paperback edition's back cover descriptor is a bit misleading as it describes the story as one that "illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another." In my mind, this isn't what the book is about, and while there are definitely many examples of this throughout the narrative (especially from Werner), I would suggest that the moral does not translate in all the characters. Marie-Laure herself doesn't show any propensity to going out of her way to do good for others, she just leads the life presented in front of her. She is good to Madame Manec for sure, but there's no surprise there, and to her uncle in his agoraphobia, but in many ways she would not survive without taking on more responsibility and she wants to help the resistance cause just so she is not cooped up in the house all the time. She does not save Werner (knowingly), but in the same way she could not really do him any harm in the brief time they are together. Most relationships are simply familiar, and I'd argue Werner's friendships are because of a lack of family.

I would suggest that instead of a moral about being good, this book demonstrates the often-described way that timelines and lives get intertwined in wars, brought together in seemingly unexplainable ways with life-altering impacts. Many books touch on this concept, drawing characters together from diverse backgrounds, conveniently placing soul mates together when one needs saving, or having death arrive at tragic moments - all very real situations in our romantic notions of times of conflict - but none do it all too convincingly while really showing how deep those interconnecting points can run. In All the Light we Cannot See those interconnecting lines begin in childhood with Werner and his sister listening to a radio and end 30 years or more after the war with two characters coming together for the first (and only) time. [I'm being vague here in an attempt not to have spoilers!] There are multiple connections, multiple levels of interconnectedness with multiple characters, and Doerr does not shy away from the fact that not all of these are positive, happy, life-affirming connections. Many are hard, trying to piece together lives cut short or finding out what you didn't know about someone you thought you knew. And it is done in a beautiful way where you know it is happening, you know it is coming, you make the connections yourself, but it doesn't effect how you feel about the story.

There are very few criticisms I can have with this book. There were only two things that I noticed as ripples in my pond of happiness about this book. First, characters come and go in the story, just fading into nothing. This is SO WELL DONE, and is so true - people disappear in times of war and are never seen from again, it happens, people die, people live on without them - but Doerr does not always explain these major characters' deaths or show them (except in one instance). It's not necessarily a bad thing - it would change the feel of the story especially in the sections written in Marie-Laure's perspective - but I couldn't help but think either the character served their point and were not brought back, or that the tragedy of their deaths was not felt. Some characters have major connections with the deceased, and we see some references to their feelings of loss, but I suppose it just didn't hit me as I'd expected. Most of the deaths - in fact none of them - really surprised me or came unexpected, even if I did want them (one in particular) to live. The deaths make complete literary sense and I wasn't even that sad about their passing or how they passed, in fact one major character's exit, though unexpected as to how he dies, was beautiful in its tragic simplicity and timing.

The second thing that stuck in my mind was the final section, the standalone chapter in 2014 (a jump of 40 years since the previous chapter). I didn't feel it was needed. It serves a purpose only of reminding the reader of the stone with magical properties, a plot line that seemed to have taken a secondary level of importance once the story brought the protagonists together, and reinforcing those properties both of long life and tragedy for the person holding it (written about in the book) and of it connecting people together (the moral, not written about as a property). But...it was inherent in the story, it didn't need repeating. We've already seen that life goes on and that new life begins. We are well aware of the loss of memory of the war. To me the final chapter seemed to hammer home a sad happy ending just a little too much, and it could simply be that it felt disconnected from the rest of the book or that it brought it too close to current day for it to feel like a story removed from my life. Small points, as the whole book was well done.

I was very happy to see a book, especially one about war, that had a disabled lead character but that doesn't use the disability as a crutch or superpower. I don't think the book would have worked without her being blind, there was a poetry in that connection to Werner and the audible connection of radio, but the book wasn't about her being blind. Her blindness, in the end, seemed no different than Werner's technical expertise, or Volkheimer's size, or von Rumpel's rather mysterious cancerous growth that keeps getting mentioned. It seems much less of a hinderance than Ettiene's paranoia.

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9 people found this helpful

Obsessed

Such an interesting story. Not like anything I’ve read in a long time. I appreciated the audiobook so much because I don’t know how well I would’ve been able to decipher a lot of the French towns and names. I thought I was going to find the narrators voice boring off putting but I actually found it very soothing and he was great with all the dialects.

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FANTASTIC book

I can’t believe I forgot to review this book when I finished it. I have it earmarked as one of my favourite books. Imagine the bravery to be a little girl without sight growing up in Paris. Then picture escaping to a small old town, re-learning how to get around. All in the time of war. Add clandestine resistance forays, magical dollhouses and a beautiful Braille book. Beautifully written.

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Stunning Book Despite Deplorable French of Narrator

Stunning, beautiful, spellbinding book. I almost didn’t listen to it because I couldn’t get past the deplorable French of the narrator. The book is set in France and Germany. The main character is French. Her name is Marie-Laure, and the narrator kept pronouncing it Murray-Lore. BRUTAL. He butchered every French name, location, and phrase. It was so distracting and infuriating that it definitely affected my enjoyment of the book. Note to Authors and Audible: If you are going to write a book set in a foreign country, please make sure that the narrator can properly pronounce words in that language!

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Great Narration

Great Narration that really made you feel the characters. The story was good however I found that there were some unnecessary part added in. Makes you really think of how life was in these tough times.

Overall, well worth the listen!

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