^ Lol- indeed the CC book club has enriched my life, expanding my reading experience, after all these YEARS!!!
But, I envy the children who at age 8 , like Werner, gifted with electronics with a passion for all scientific issues or Audubom, ( Frederick ) who were attracted to nature, and it becomes a lifelong pursuit. Actually, Doerr stated he was one of those kids.
I enjoyed this interview with Anthony Doerr: http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/995.Anthony_Doerr. It’s more informal than some of the others. I liked his response about the sheer difficulty of writing the book:
His observations about the human race reflect some of the themes in All the Light We Cannot See:
I should read this book.
All the Light We Cannot See won the Pulitzer Prize yesterday: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/21/pulitzer-prize-fiction-all-the-light-we-cannot-see-anthony-doerr
I loved this book so am happy to see it won.
D just posted about the Pulitzer Prize last night - I’m looking to make that my next read, after I finish Station Eleven.
I read this book on vacation earlier this winter and had been so anxious to do so. I absolutely loved this book and will read it again quite soon. I loved the concept and thought it was not only clever but it was so beautifully done and I was totally engaged in the story and the setting. I have recommended it several times. I think it was the most careful and beautifully crafted book I have read in quite a while.
I JUST finished and loved it. So beautiful. NOW I can go back and read this thread that i have been avoiding!
Question…do you think this book would be appropriate or inappropriate for a 13 yo girl?
I too thought of the (movie) scene with the plastic bags in the wind but couldn’t remember the film.
Did anyone other than me question the nature of Volkheimer’s tenderness with Werner? I suspect most think it was brotherly but I kept expecting V to reach out in another way.
I had mixed feelings about this book, which is admittedly a good read. It started out very promising, but I thought the book sort of collapsed in the last third into a sentimental banal soup. WWII novels about Europe are so overdone now and they all have the same motifs. For example, there was no need to bring Jutta to Berlin toward the end of the war with some trumped-up plot device just so she could be raped by Soviets. That’s another book, "A Woman in Berlin."It seemed like every cliche about the war was packed into the last part: partisan warfare in the East, cunning scholarly Nazis looking for treasure. Furthermore, the tender, strange bond between Werner and Marie-Laure didn’t need Volkheimer’s comment about “I think he fell in love.” A false note that did not really capture the subtlety and uniqueness of that short relationship.
I found the description of the school at Schulpforta to be harrowing. The way in which people are forced to bond through shared guilt was described very accurately and disturbingly.
I think a mature 13-year-old could get a lot out of this book. The things described are no worse than what’s on TV or in films all around.
Hi TempeMom, I thought of Volkheimer’s relationship with Werner as brotherly, but I can see how it might be open to interpretation.
I think the book would be appropriate for a mature 13-year old girl. The layout makes it easy to read, but some of the atrocities of war are hard to take. In particular, I’m thinking of the rape of Werner’s sister and her companions, although the rapes happen “off-screen.”
I found this read-along online, which has a lot of reflection on the book: http://blue-stockings-society.dreamwidth.org/4705.html#cutid1
NJSue, I agree with you about Jutta’s experience seeming out-of-place in the book. The novel doesn’t really follow her story, so I thought that inserting the rape scene without any genuine focus or follow-up was a disservice to her character (and to the real women who suffered in such ways during wartime).
That said, I did like the book very much and continue to recommend it. It’s not perfect, but still a wonderful read.
I love, love, love the book, but Jutta’s scene was definitely disturbing. I recommended the book to a person I share my favorite books with who had had a traumatic experience and is PTSD’d if she’s not warned to be ready for it, so that was a time that, to me, the dreaded “trigger warning” made sense.
She was glad to be forewarned, and loved the book.
I dunno. I thought the scene with Jutta and her co-workers was used to remind us that German civilians weren’t all living a life of ease. It would have been easy to think that Jutta was still at home at the orphanage going to school.
You know I kept expecting rape throughout. There was somewhere a vague reference to blond aryans ravishing or something beautiful jewesses but up until the very end with Jutta nothing. I fully expected the whole “the Russians are savages” to turn out to be “oh they are just like us!” but…
I actually think for my 13 we’d probably read it “together” swapping chapters. She is intellectually mature but sheltered from CSI/stalker/violence type tv and the like. And I would likely edit out the rape, as off screen as it is it is still highly disturbing. And I don’t want to have to explain why the older woman said she’d “go first” to protect the girls or any of that…shudder. It’s a conversation we have to have but at this age I think the vague idea of feeling especially vulnerable is enough.
I really like how off screen most of it is. Those of us, which is most see the implications of things like the Giant taking the shoes or bunches of people on trains without it being in your face. We get exposed as Werner does, slowly and a little distorted like vaseline on a camera lens.
I was talking today to my DH about the french resistance. It’s pretty interesting especially as at least my hs taught WWII it seemed to focus more on the French being kind of wussy and meeting the Germans at the border with wine and chocolate. There was a passion behind the resistance that is very compelling.
I really enjoyed the writing, very beautiful and descriptive and haunting in its way. He really painted a picture in my mind of of the settings. I did not understand the same thing you did as to why Werner placed the gem in the sea. It’s not as if he had any connection to it or even knew its story. And was the key to the sea gate? Did she mean for him to go back and get the gem some day?
I was sooooooo shocked when Werner was killed. I never expected that.
:)>-
His death had a “Das Boot” feel to it, in that he survives a lengthy near-death ordeal buried alive, only to be killed after emerging. I guess there’s some irony in the fact that he blows himself out of his tomb with a grenade, only to then die by stepping on a landmine. Even without the landmine, I think Werner was doomed–by the end, his illness seemed like full-blown sepsis.
Coincidentally, this just showed up in my newsfeed: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32529679
I had thought Werner chose this, that he could not go on knowing what he’d done during the war.