He also sharpens her mind by hiding birthday gifts in intricate puzzle boxes that he carves. Shy but courageous and resourceful, Marie-Laure has learned to navigate the streets of her quartier with the help of a wooden scale-model made by her father. One is Marie-Laure LeBlanc, the blind daughter of the widowed master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Not martyred emblems, like Anne Frank or the British evacuees on the torpedoed City of Benares, just ordinary children, two of thousands swallowed up in a conflict they had nothing to do with. I’m not sure I will read a better novel this year than Anthony Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See.” Enthrallingly told, beautifully written and so emotionally plangent that some passages bring tears, it is completely unsentimental - no mean trick when you consider that Doerr’s two protagonists are children who have been engulfed in the horror of World War II.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |