I felt like I had to follow A Gentleman in Moscow with Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, because I read them back-to-back in 2025. They were the two best books I read last year.
After finishing A Gentleman and enjoying it so much, I felt like whatever came next just simply would not be great. I usually try to follow a book with something completely different, but instead went with historical fiction again. All the Light, Book #2 in this series, has an addictive plot, but the writing is so good that it seems like it almost wouldn’t matter.
A few years ago, I decided that I had more books on my to-read shelf than I could get through in a lifetime, and so I instituted a 40-50 page limit. If a book doesn’t have me hooked by then, I’m out. I couldn’t read Doerr’s 2015 book fast enough.
The story follows two main characters: Marie-Laure, a blind French girl who is living in Paris with her father when the Germans roll in and take over during World War II; and Werner, a German orphan who leverages his brilliance with electronics into escaping poverty. Life gets very complicated for both of these children.
Marie-Laure loses her sight at six and relies on a model of Paris made by her clever father, who worked as a locksmith at the Museum of Natural History. She eventually has to escape the city to find an eccentric uncle living in Saint-Malo, walled coastal city in France.
Werner’s situation is more complicated. A boy with a big heart and a sister to protect, he ends up being forced into a role of searching for resistance fighters using technology.
There is also the matter of a valuable missing jewel that once resided in the museum and has vanished. It supposedly holds some supernatural powers, a la the Hope Diamond or Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Nazis are hellbent on finding it.
There are themes of war and the complicated decisions it thrusts on people — not to mention how some retain their humanity while others lose it completely. Human connection runs throughout, in complex ways and there is plenty of suspense that is tense and genuine on the page.
The book won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and while that doesn’t always equal a popular read, it does in this case. Netflix has adapted the movie, but I haven’t seen it. There is a bit of criticism of it online (surprise) for not being as “complex” as the book.
I highly recommend All the Light We Cannot See, not only as one of the two best books I read last year, but as one of the best this century. This summer, I plan on reading Cloud Cuckoo Land by Doerr.
**Discussion for here or social media: when thinking of wars, is it easy to dehumanize the people involved? How about a writer who makes the reader sympathize with characters who are “the bad guys”? Can you think of other books or movies that do this?
**Writing prompt: your character goes to sleep in his/her own bed in 2026, then wakes up to gunfire and chaos as the Germans enter Paris in the summer of 1940. Your character is 10 years old and his/her parents are nowhere to be found. What happens next.