All the Light We Cannot See

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For the upcoming television adaptation, see All the Light We Cannot See (TV series).
All the Light We Cannot See
All the Light We Cannot See (Doerr novel).jpg
AuthorAnthony Doerr
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistorical
Published2014 (Scribner)
Media typePrint (hardback and softback)
Pages544 (hardback); 531 (softback)
AwardsPulitzer Prize for Fiction, Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
ISBN978-1-4767-4658-6
OCLC852226410

All the Light We Cannot See is a war novel written by American author Anthony Doerr, published by Scribner on May 6, 2014. It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Set in occupied France during World War II, the novel centers on a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths eventually cross.

Plot[edit]

In 1934, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a six-year-old blind girl living in Paris with her father, the master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. She hears stories of the purported Sea of Flames diamond hidden within the museum, which is said to grant immortality at the cost of endless misfortune to those around the owner. Allegedly, the only way to end the curse is to return the stone to the ocean, its rightful owner.

In Germany, 8-year-old Werner Pfennig is an orphan in the coal-mining town of Zollverein. Werner is exceptionally bright and has a natural skill for repairing radios and after he finds a broken one with his sister Jutta, he fixes it and he uses it to hear science and music programs transmitted across Europe.

When Germany invades France in 1940, Marie-Laure and her father flee to the coastal town of Saint-Malo to take refuge with her great-uncle Etienne, a recluse and shellshocked veteran of the Great War who spent his time broadcasting old records of his dead brother across Europe. Unknown to Marie-Laure, her father had been entrusted by the museum with either the Sea of Flames diamond or one of three exact copies, made to protect the original gem.

Months later, while building a model town of Saint-Malo for Marie-Laure, Marie-Laure's father is arrested. He is not heard from again, leaving Marie-Laure alone with Etienne and Madame Manec, Etienne's longtime maid and housekeeper. Meanwhile, a Nazi gemologist, Reinhold von Rumpel, begins to search for the Sea of Flames diamond, seeking its purported immortality, to save himself from dying an untimely death due to his spreading cancer. He locates each of the three forgeries, and sets his sights on Saint-Malo.

Werner's skill earns him a place at the National Political Institute of Education at Schulpforta, a draconian state boarding school teaching Nazi values. Werner is obedient and highly efficient in technical work. He begins work on radio technology and is soon placed in the Wehrmacht, tracking illegal enemy signals alongside Volkheimer, a large yet gentle soldier from Schulpforta. Werner becomes increasingly disillusioned with his position, especially after an innocent young girl is killed by his group after incorrectly tracing a signal.

Meanwhile, Madame Manec participates in the Resistance along with other local women. These activities have some success, but Madame Manec becomes ill and dies. Marie-Laure and Etienne continue her efforts, transmitting secret messages alongside piano recordings and important Morse code information. Etienne's signal is traced, and Werner's group is told to track the broadcast. Werner tracks it to Etienne's house, but recognizes the source as the one who broadcast the science programs he listened to at the orphanage, and does not disclose its location. Etienne is arrested for other reasons, leaving Marie-Laure alone, who continues the broadcasts.

As the Allied forces lay siege to Saint-Malo, Werner is trapped beneath a pile of rubble, where he stays alive without food or water for days just by listening to Marie-Laure's radio broadcasts in which she reads from her Jules Verne novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, which was in Braille. At around the same time, Marie-Laure opens the model of Etienne's house and finds the diamond.

After being trapped for several days, Werner escapes and heads for Etienne's house, in pursuit of Marie-Laure as well as "the Frenchman” whose broadcasts had filled his bleak childhood with hope. There he finds von Rumpel in pursuit of the jewel. After a brief standoff, he kills von Rumpel and meets Marie-Laure, who had hidden in the attic to protect herself and the stone. Although only together for a short time, they form a strong bond, and Werner finds himself falling in love with her.

As they flee from Saint-Malo, Marie-Laure places the Sea of Flames diamond inside a gated grotto flooded with seawater from the tide, thereby returning it to the ocean. She gives the key to Werner, who sends her away into safety but is captured himself and sent to an American disarmament center where he becomes gravely ill. One night, in a fit of delirium, Werner leaves the hospital tent and accidentally steps on a German landmine which instantly kills him.

Thirty years later, Volkheimer finds Jutta and gives her Werner's belongings at the time of his death, including the model house which contained the Sea of Flames and tells her that possibly Werner had been in love. Jutta travels to France with her son Max, where she meets Marie-Laure in Paris, now working as a marine biologist at the Museum of Natural History. Marie-Laure opens the model and finds the key to the grotto. The story ends in 2014 with Marie-Laure, now 86 years old, walking with her grandson, Michel in the streets of Paris where she grew up.

Characters[edit]

Marie-Laure's side[edit]

  • Marie-Laure LeBlanc – A blind French girl; the first main protagonist
  • Daniel LeBlanc – Marie-Laure's father and the head locksmith at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris
  • Etienne LeBlanc – Marie-Laure's great-uncle and a resident of Saint-Malo
  • Madame Manec – Etienne's longtime maid and housekeeper

Werner's side[edit]

  • Werner Pfennig – a German orphan boy, very scientifically gifted; the second main protagonist
  • Jutta Pfennig – Werner's strong-willed sister
  • Frau Elena – caretaker of Werner and Jutta in the orphanage, who teaches them French
  • Hauptmann – Werner's professor at Schulpforta
  • Frederick – Werner's strong-willed but kind-hearted friend
  • Frank Volkheimer – an older boy at Schulpforta who looks after Werner; later a sergeant in the German army
  • Neumann One – a member of Werner's unit in the Wehrmacht
  • Neumann Two – a member of Werner's unit in the Wehrmacht; crass and addicted to pain pills
  • Walter Bernd – a German engineer; the oldest in Werner's unit

Other characters[edit]

  • Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel – a sergeant major and gemologist in the German army; the main antagonist

Background and writing[edit]

According to Doerr, the first inspiration for All the Light We Cannot See was in 2004 during a train ride to Penn Station when he saw a man get angry over his call cutting out after the train entered a tunnel. Doerr thought that the man was forgetting the "miracle" of the ability to talk to someone from across the world using the phone. This led to him conceptualizing a story set in a time when such a thing would be considered a miracle.[1][2] After the incident, he wrote down the title for the novel on a notebook.[3] Until his book trip to France a year later, the only idea he had for the book was a girl reading to a boy over the radio. During the trip, Doerr visited Saint-Malo and became fascinated by it, particularly the fact that despite its old appearance, it had actually been destroyed near the end of World War II. Doerr considered this "an early step" to writing the novel.[1][4]

The novel took ten years to write, much of which was spent researching for the novel.[5] He researched diaries and letters written and sent during World War II and visited Germany, Paris, and Saint-Malo for further study.[6] His conducted research allowed him to add details in the novel related to each of the settings such as the names of radios in Germany.[5] Doerr wanted to write a novel that told a story of World War II in a new way. Before then, many of the war stories Doerr portrayed the French resistance as charismatic heroes and the German Nazis as evil torturers. He decided to tell a more nuanced view of this by featuring a sympathetic young boy named Werner who gets tragically involved in Nazism, while having the French narrative surround a capable disabled person named Marie-Laure.[4] However, in order to balance out the sympathetic portrayal of a Nazi, Doerr wrote the character, Reinhold von Rumpel, as a stereotypical Nazi.[3]

Reception[edit]

All the Light We Cannot See was commercially successful and became a breakout hit upon its publication. Anthony Doerr found the novel's popularity unexpected due to it featuring a sympathetic Nazi and containing intricate passages about technology.[6] It was on The New York Times Best Seller list for over 200 weeks.[7] It entered the list a few weeks after the release of the novel on May 2014. It sold well throughout the year, with sales tripling after the novel lost the National Book Award to Redeployment. In the run-up to Christmas of that year, it was out of stock on Amazon and various booksellers.[6] Sales continued throughout 2016. Morry Driscoll of the Christian Science Monitor attributed to its accessible storytelling and the appeal of World War II novels to readers.[8] In January 2021, Publishers Weekly estimated that All the Light We Cannot See reached 5.5 million sales in North America and 9.3 million sales worldwide.[9] By September 2021, the novel had reached over 15 million sales.[7][10]

All the Light We Cannot See was received positively by critics.[6] In a collection of fifteen reviews by book review aggregator Book Marks, twelve were either positive or rave reviews.[11] Josh Cook of the Star Tribune and Yvonne Zipp of the Christian Science Monitor considered the novel to be Doerr's best book.[12][13] In a starred review for Booklist, Brad Hopper called it "a novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned".[14] Los Angeles Times's Steph Cha, although having criticized the reliance on melodrama in the beginning, lauded the novel as a "beautiful, expansive tale".[15] JoJo Marshall of Entertainment Weekly asserted that All the Light We Cannot See is a "not-to-be-missed tale [that] is a testament to the buoyancy of our dreams".[16]

Critics praised the novel's writing style. William T. Vollmann, writing for The New York Times Book Review, found the novel to be easy to follow despite its flashbacks and considered it "a good read".[17] In a review in The Boston Globe, John Freeman praised Doerr's work, having called his language fresh and noted his use of show, don't tell.[18] Amanda Vaill, in a review in The Washington Post, considered the novel to be emotionally effective and unsentimental. She writes, "Every piece of backstory reveals information that charges the emerging narrative with significance, until at last the puzzle-box of the plot slides open to reveal the treasure hidden inside."[19] However, although applauding Doerr's attention to detail, Carmen Callil writing for The Guardian considered the novel too long and the dialogue too American; though she opted to forgive Doerr for thereof.[20] Dan Cryer of the San Francisco Chronicle found the prose to be "gorgeous", Doerr's writing to be robust, and the pacing to be great.[21]

The characterization was also praised; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Steven Novak found it to be where the merits of the novel were rooted in.[22] Sharon Peters of USA Today opined, "Few authors can so gently — yet resolutely — pull readers into such deep understanding of and connection with their characters."[23] The focus on good characters in a wartime setting was found to be fresh by Kirkus Reviews.[24] Evelyn Beck of Library Journal lauded the characters of Marie-Laure and Werner, finding them "so interesting and sympathetic" that they engage the reader.[25] Vollman and Cha had differing opinions over whether Marie-Laure or Werner respectively had better characterization, with Vollman citing Marie-Laure's "believable" representation of blindness and Cha citing Werner's internal struggle with Nazism.[17][15] Vollman in particular criticized the use of Nazi stereotypes.[17]

The New York Times named it one of its 10 best books of the year.[26] The novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award.[27] The novel won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction[28] and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.[29][30] The novel was runner-up for the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction[31] and won the 2015 Ohioana Library Association Book Award for Fiction.[32]

Awards[edit]

Award Year Result
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2015 Won[28]
Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2015 Won[29]
Ohioana Library Association Book Award for Fiction 2015 Won[32]
Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction 2015 Runner up[31]

Television adaptation[edit]

Main article: All the Light We Cannot See (TV series)

In March 2019, Netflix and 21 Laps Entertainment acquired the rights to develop a limited television series adaptation of the novel with Shawn Levy, Dan Levine and Josh Barry executive producing.[33] In September 2021, it was announced that Netflix had given the production a series order consisting of four episodes, with Steven Knight writing the series and Levy directing all episodes.[34] In December 2021, it was announced that Aria Mia Loberti would play as Marie-Laure.[35]

In January 2022, it was announced that both Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie joined the cast, set as leads opposed to Loberti. Ruffalo is set to portray Daniel LeBlanc, while Laurie will portray Etienne LeBlanc.[36]

In February 2022, it was announced that Louis Hofmann, Lars Eidinger and Nell Sutton joined the cast.[37]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Doerr, Anthony (May 25, 2014). "World War II In A New 'Light': Empathy Found In Surprising Places". NPR (Interview). Interviewed by Arun Rath. Retrieved April 2, 2022.
  2. ^ "How A Subway Ride Sparked The Idea For Idaho Author Anthony Doerr's Newest Book". Boise State Public Radio. May 7, 2014. Retrieved April 2, 2022.
  3. ^ a b Doerr, Anthony (July 26, 2014). "Novelist uses war to explore what we see, and what we don't". The San Diego Union-Tribune (Interview). Interviewed by John Wilkens. Retrieved April 2, 2022.
  4. ^ a b Doerr, Anthony (March 24, 2015). "How Anthony Doerr Came To Write All the Light We Cannot See". HuffPost. Retrieved April 2, 2022.
  5. ^ a b Dean, Michelle (April 22, 2015). "Anthony Doerr: 'I grew up where to call yourself a writer would be pretentious'". The Guardian. Retrieved April 2, 2022.
  6. ^ a b c d Alter, Alexandra (December 26, 2014). "Anthony's Doerr's 'All the Light We Cannot See' Hits It Big". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 1, 2015. Retrieved September 26, 2015.
  7. ^ a b Zorrila, Mónica Marie (September 22, 2021). "All the Light We Cannot See Greenlit as Limited Series on Netflix". Variety. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  8. ^ Driscoll, Morry (November 17, 2016). "All the Light We Cannot See: Why it's still on the bestseller lists". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  9. ^ "Anthony Doerr's New Novel Coming in September". Publishers Weekly. January 22, 2021. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  10. ^ Porter, Rick (September 22, 2021). "All the Light We Cannot See Series Based on Best-Seller a Go at Netflix". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  11. ^ "All the Light We Cannot See". Book Marks. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
  12. ^ Cook, Josh (May 17, 2014). "Review: All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr". Star Tribune. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
  13. ^ Zipp, Yvonne (May 21, 2014). "All the Light We Cannot See is a compelling WWII novel by acclaimed author Anthony Doerr". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
  14. ^ Hopper, Brad (May 2014). "All the Light We Cannot See". Booklist. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
  15. ^ a b Cha, Steph (May 23, 2014). "Review: All the Light We Cannot See pinpoints 2 lives in war". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
  16. ^ "All The Light We Cannot See". Entertainment Weekly. May 16, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
  17. ^ a b c Vollmann, William T. (May 8, 2014). "Darkness Visible". The New York Times Book Review. Archived from the original on March 13, 2018. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
  18. ^ Freeman, John (May 3, 2014). "'All the Light We Cannot See' by Anthony Doerr". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on June 28, 2017. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
  19. ^ Vaill, Amanda (May 5, 2014). "'All the Light We Cannot See,' by Anthony Doerr". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 21, 2016. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
  20. ^ Callil, Carmen (May 17, 2014). "All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr review – a story of morality, science and Nazi occupation". The Guardian. Archived from the original on April 22, 2015. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
  21. ^ Cryer, Dan (May 2, 2014). "All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved March 30, 2022.
  22. ^ Novak, Steven (May 17, 2014). "All the Light We Cannot See: Senses and sensibility in World War II". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved March 30, 2022.
  23. ^ Peters, Sharon (May 10, 2014). "Anthony Doerr's 'Light' shines bright in new novel". USA Today. Retrieved March 30, 2022.
  24. ^ "All the Light We Cannot See". Kirkus Reviews. March 6, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
  25. ^ Beck, Evelyn (February 1, 2014). "All the Light We Cannot See". Library Journal. Retrieved March 30, 2022.
  26. ^ "The 10 Best Books of 2014". The New York Times. December 4, 2014. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved September 26, 2015.
  27. ^ "Get To Know The Finalists For The 2014 National Book Award". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  28. ^ a b Flood, Alison (April 21, 2015). "Pulitzer prize for fiction goes to All the Light We Cannot See". The Guardian. Guardian News & Media. Archived from the original on April 22, 2015. Retrieved April 21, 2015.
  29. ^ a b "Anthony Doerr wins Carnegie Medal for fiction". Midcontinent Communications. Associated Press. June 28, 2015. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved June 28, 2015.
  30. ^ "'All the Light We Cannot See,' 'Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption' win 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction | News and Press Center". www.ala.org. July 1, 2015. Archived from the original on October 6, 2015. Retrieved September 26, 2015.
  31. ^ a b D. Verne Morland. "Dayton Literary Peace Prize – Anthony Doerr, 2015 Fiction Runner-Up". daytonliterarypeaceprize.org. Archived from the original on 2015-12-08.
  32. ^ a b "2015 OHIOANA BOOK AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-09-05. Retrieved 2015-12-02.
  33. ^ Petski, Denise (March 12, 2019). "Netflix & Shawn Levy's 21 Laps Developing 'All The Light We Cannot See' Novel As Limited Series". Deadline Hollywood.
  34. ^ White, Peter (September 22, 2021). "Shawn Levy & Steven Knight's Limited Series Adaptation Of WWII Story 'All The Light We Cannot See' Gets Series Order At Netflix, Opens Casting Call". Deadline Hollywood.
  35. ^ Petski, Denise (December 9, 2021). "'All The Light We Cannot See': Newcomer Aria-Mia Loberti, Who Is Blind, Cast As Female Lead In Netflix Limited Series Adaptation". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
  36. ^ Petski, Denise (January 10, 2022). "Mark Ruffalo & Hugh Laurie Join 'All The Light We Cannot See' Netflix Limited Series Adaptation". Deadline Hollywood.
  37. ^ Petski, Denise (February 3, 2022). "'All The Light We Cannot See': Louis Hofmann To Star, Two More Cast In Netflix Series Adaptation". Deadline Hollywood.

External links[edit]

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