Must Read Books -4

Do you want to read books but do not know where to start? Which books to pick up?

Continuing with my list of #mustreadbooks, today we will discuss about this book All the light we cannot see by Anthony Doer

Let's start with the fourth book in the series

Book Genre - Historical Fiction ?

About the Author –Anthony Doerr?(born October 27, 1973) is an American?author?of novels and short stories. He gained widespread recognition for his 2014 novel All the Light We Cannot See, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Anthony Doerr is the author of five books,?The Shell Collector ? ,?About Grace ? ,?Memory Wall ? ,?Four Seasons in Rome ? and?All the Light We Cannot See ? . He almost took 10 years to complete the novel All the light we cannot see.

Plot of the book ?

This book starts late in World War II as the Allies begin shelling the French City of Saint-Malo to drive out the remaining Nazi troops. The two main characters in the book are Marie Laure, a blind French girl who fled here with her uncle from Paris, and Werner, a radio expert in the German army who is stuck in the city when the attack begins. The book jumps back and forth in time and between the two characters as it charts out their individual story line and then how both young people were brought to this place.

Marie-Laure, a blind girl who lives with her father. Her father is the locksmith at the Paris Museum of Natural History, and Marie is raised wholly in the museum and at home. Marie has a semi-idyllic childhood until the Nazi's invade Paris and she and her father have to flee to another city, where a reclusive uncle lives. Unknown to Marie, her father is smuggling the world's most priceless jewel out of the city on behalf of the museum. Unfortunately for them, a German soldier is hot on the trail of the jewel, and will go to extreme lengths to find it.

Werner is a German orphan who teaches himself everything to do with radios; after repairing a senior-ranking German officer's radio, he is given entry into a youth academy that trains young soldiers for Hitler's Army. He is then drafted to utilize his skills to find resistance armies who are using the radio - but Werner is no soldier and soon realizes the cost of his talent. The author ?treats Marie Laure and Werner with equal empathy, and their interaction – when they finally meet – is not your stereotypical wartime love story. It is much better, much more bittersweet and haunting.

Subjects handled in the book:

• This is an imaginative novel which is inspired by the World War II horror stories, and you can actually dive into the day to day lives of the people living in the War and Post War era.
• The two imaginary characters caught up in Anthony's novel are completely contradictory in nature and both are strong headed people who have their own free will and they use their own resilience to pave path for themselves.
• Repeatedly in the face of danger, the blind protagonist-Marie turns her disciplined mind to logic and reason rather than giving in to fear. At age six?Marie-Laure?loses her sight,?but?with her father's help she learns to "see" the world through touch.
• There is such an intricate and detailed description in the novel of the puzzle boxes and the miniature street 3d model that Marie’s father makes for her so that she can touch it and remember it by heart even though she is not able to see it. This makes Marie completely trained to the streets, and ?by actually counting the steps, she retreats the way in the city on her own.
• Like every romantic novel, there is connection shown between the two protagonists and how their pasts help to bring them together.
• I felt a strong connection to the movie Titanic—where the novel has an similar ending and it spans over the decades after what happened to the main character of the story in its amazing Epilogue.
• We are taken through the museums in Paris to the streets of Saint Malo and Essen , Berlin.
• This book also shows the other side of the men who participated in the Nazi War effort and that not all the people who did so had a choice in the matter and the memories of the war and brutal killing of the innocent people also haunted them as shown in the character of? Werner .

What you feel after reading this story:

The writing style of the book is lyrical and moving. This is also being made into drama series which is already available on NETFLIX.All the Scenes from the book are captured in rich detail which can be perceived by all senses. As it often happens with book lovers, there is ample scope to use your own imagination which will lead the reader on a journey through the eyes — or rather, all senses — of three main narrators. The reader is delivered the right amount of information about the circumstances to evoke feelings for the individuals, rather than a broad history lesson.

Conclusion :

?Even though this book does not delve deep into the war scenes and other politics, it is set in that ear and the reader is immediately transported to that era of the war. So for all the readers who are interested in Historical fiction interspersed with a unique love story, This book is a must read.

#BOOKSUMMARIES #bookreadinglove #booksthatinspire #mustreadbooks #nonfictionalbooks #booksummary4 #allthelightwecannotsee #anthonydoerr

P.S. I love reading books and get transported to a different imaginary world. I adore and read Fiction books in the same enthusiasm that I read Self help or Memoirs and Non Fiction books. I run a book club and it is so liberating to talk to like minded people and read together and listen and discuss the different perspectives/takeaways that each one feels from reading the same book.

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