Having just finished my first book of 2019, I can’t help but wonder if reading the book All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr was worth the hours it took to read it. As all books about wartime, it was painful to read through the Doerr’s vivid imagery as he tells the tale of two individuals, Werner Pfennig and Marie-Laure LeBlanc, as they experience WWII. Their lives ultimately converge, and ultimately, it brings us to an understanding of how we rise amid the ruins and how the memories of yesterday still remain, leaving a indelible mark on us. And the world, it continues to turn, and towns and lives are rebuilt.
I hope that I will never feel the stings of wartime and that my children will never experience such either. And I think of the poor children, who were treated like men, who aged in the months and years of their service and returned, often broken physically and emotionally, to a home which does not acknowledge the reality of their journey. Doerr explores the grey: how easy it is to join a cause and to fight almost blindly for it and to wonder which side is the “good side,” hoping that their side is the good.
The two lives of Werner and Marie-Laure and many others are intertwined in this tragic story that grasps at survival and hope, and it reminds us how much we can affect those individuals whose path we cross during our journey and how the beauty of this earth whether through music or science/knowledge or the natural world around us can bring us together.
If you liked this book, you may like The Nightingale: A Novel by Kristin Hannah, which brings forward heartache through another tale set during WWII.
Not Done Learning 