My review of All The Light We Cannot See, the 2015 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction #MondayBlogs #PulitzerPrize #PulitzerPrizeChallenge #AmReading #BookReview

I’m back on track this week with my Pulitzer Prize Challenge. I’ve just finished the 2015 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, All The Light We Cannot See from Anthony Doerr. This book absolutely destroyed me – in a good way. I loved this book. Loved! Loved! Loved! I’m obsessed with WWII on the European Front, so it’s not such a surprise I would enjoy Doerr’s novel, which takes place in France and Germany in the years leading up to the war and the war itself. But this novel is so much more than a novel about the war. It is an epic story that explores the very depths of human nature.

When people ruminate about the great American novel, this is the type of book to which they are referring. Doerr doesn’t just describe Europe before and during the war. He opens the door for us to view that world through the eyes of Marie-Laure and Werner. He transports the reader to the streets of Paris and Saint Malo. You can almost taste the salt water from the sea in the air as you read. Then, he jumps to Germany and the coal mines where I could practically feel Werner’s desperate desire to find an escape from the mines awaiting him.

After we fall in love with Marie-Laure and Werner (and I dare you to say you didn’t fall in love with these two), he slowly builds suspense as the war machine that was Nazi Germany revs its engines. My heart was in my throat as Marie-Laure fled Paris with her father. Werner’s journey was no less perilous. His exceptional skills with radios have allowed him to escape the mines, but what other horrors await him? Doerr jumps back and forth through time building and building suspense until a reader is forced to pull up a chair and turn the pages until the final culmination of the Battle for Brest and the occupation of Saint Malo.

Doerr connects the stories of the various characters in ways a reader would never suspect, but with the result that the story is interwoven in such a way as to remind us that humanity is not only made up of different tribes and cultures, but at its base we are all the same – We are all just human beings trying to survive in a sometimes extremely harsh world.

Everyone should read this novel. If nothing else to remind us of the damage caused to civilians during war.

*****

Coming up: I’m now reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I’ve been working on this book for months! The likelihood of finishing before next week is therefore low. Not to worry! Living just minutes from the actual painting, I can share some stories about it with you.