ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE- Anthony Doerr

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE is my latest adult read.
Historical Fiction.
Holocaust.
Good and evil.
Amazingly crafted.
Beautiful writing.
I loved it.

ALL THE LIGHT is the story of two characters, a little French girl, Marie Laure, and a German boy, Werner. Marie Laure lives with her father, who is a locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in France. Marie-Laure is blind, and her father has built a tiny village, totally to scale, so that she can memorize, then traverse her neighborhood. When Paris is occupied by the Nazis, Marie-Laure and her father travel to the seaside town of Saint Malo to live with an uncle, whose own WWI experiences have left him an agoraphobic. Marie-Laure's father carries a valuable gem, a treasure given to him by the museum to protect.

Far away, Werner is an orphan, growing up with a younger sister in Nazi Germany. Their father was killed in a mining accident, and the two siblings live in a kind of foster home. Werner is fascinated by electronic devices and becomes an expert at repairing and transmitting messages by radios. These skills lead him to a place in the Hitler Youth. Werner's job is to use the radio to ferret out nationalists who are transmitting messages for their countries, a job which he likes less and less.

Doerr's crafting of the book is pretty much genius. When the story opens, both Marie-Laure and Werner are in the war-torn town of Saint Malo in France. Doerr then takes the reader back in time, alternating chapters of Marie-Laure and Werner. Throughout the book, the reader knows that somehow the two characters paths are going to cross, but it's hard to imagine when or where that intersection might occur.

I devoured the book the first time for the story, which I totally loved. It's probably geeky, but this weekend I'm planning on reading the book again, this time to pay more attention to how Doerr crafted the book, because his use of time, and his back and forth between the characters is pretty much amazing. I'm going to be taking lots of notes because we have book club next weekend and I want to be prepared. This is also one of the those books with lots of really powerful lines, the kind you copy down and think about for a long, long time.

ALL THE LIGHT is a long one (544 pages!) but it's well worth the read!

POETRY FRIDAY

I'm a first round judge for the CYBILS poetry category. For the past six weeks, I've been reading and rereading about thirty poetry books that have been published in the last year. One of those books is REQUIEM: POEMS OF THE TEREZIN GHETTO by Paul Janezcko. In an afterword, Janezcko gives readers background about Terezin, a concentration camp, located on the banks of the Ohre River.

(Terezin) became home for the Jewish intellectuals and artists of Prague. As a result, it became a prison in which the arts were tolerated, then encouraged, as a Nazi propaganda tool. Classical music and opera were commonplace, despite the horrors and cruelty of captivity. Lectures were delivered in attics and basements of the barracks. Most of these activities were allowed by the Nazis, who saw these artistic events as proof that they were treating the Jews humanely and allowing their culture to flourish. The reality of the situation was, of course, quite the opposite. Musicians who performed beautifully one night were packed into cattle cars the next, transported to the gas chambers.

Each of the 35 poems in the book is told by different fictional character, either a prisoner or German guard. The poems, sparse and haunting, illustrated by actual pencil sketches and watercolors from inmates, help me to remember and care. They would be perfect for a middle or high school social studies unit on the Holocaust.

"Wilfred Becker/34507"

When Otto's number was called,

Eva wept.

She would go with him.

Insisted.

They would have one more night

together.

She traded half a loaf of bread

for two hours

in a kumbal with a curtain.

Otto asked if I would play

my violin.

"I would be honored, my friend."

"Can you play Johann Strauss?"

I smiled. "I am German, am I not?"

So it was on that frigid night

I played waltzes for them.

"The Blue Danube"

"Where the Lemons Bloom"

"Youthful Dreams"

All played softly

notes like stars.

When they pulled back the curtain

and nodded to me,

I bowed

and played a final waltz.

- Paul Janezcko

Poetry Friday is at Dori Reads