ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
My dad loved history. Loved it so much that he used to quote certain historical figures and go on and on on about specific historical happenings. It comes as no surprise to me that PBS is one of my favorite channels. If I find some historical documentary, please do not disturb. This is my PBS AND CHILL time. I am intrigued and eternally fascinated with stories from the past.
Early this year, I promised myself that I would read more. I came across the Goldfinch which won the Pulitzer Prize for 2013 and decided to start reading the works of these Pulitzer prize winners. To win a Pulitzer in writing is like nabbing an OSCAR. It's huge, it's major. Doerr's book had been on my radar having seen it week after week on the New York Time's bestseller list.
The book is set in World War II Germany and France, just that initial detail was enough to have me scurrying to the counter. Without giving much away, the story is about a blind French girl and a young German boy and the many lessons they learned before, during and after the war.
The story switches back and forth through time which can be a tad tedious for the reader to follow but for me that where I got to learn more about the characters and the events that shaped them. Reading some chapters in the book was at times hard to stomach. War changes people, it makes them animals at times. Women and girls were raped, the killings of soldiers, some blown up, others tortured....it can be heavy to read. Doerr captured everything so vividly that at times I had to pause because I could hear myself breathing. That's how much I was immersed into the story. I was often wowed by the descriptions brought forth from the blind girl's perspective. I could not put this book down.
There were so many underlying lessons, the title of the book was just the beginning. One of my favorite lines from the book goes like this,
" Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever."
