Release date: May 6th, 2014
Series: / standalone
Pages: 531
Genre: Historical fiction
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
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I picked this book up because it was recommended to me and because I love this genre, specifically a story being set in the time of II. WW. The main characters are a blind French girl and a very intelligent young German boy who's an orphan.
All of this pointed towards me really loving the story, especially since so many people obviously did and wrote praises about it. It was even awarded, so I started the book with excitement and curiosity.
I quickly got a cold shower. The story started off good, but it quickly started dragging and literally nothing was happening. I thought I'd get a heart-warming and beautiful story, but all I got to read about was some magical stone that, apparently, brings a person either luck or a curse (mixed opinions about that from different people).
This is where the book quickly lost me because it started to get really awful, dreadful and too dry for me to continue reading on. I don't understand the fascination with this book at all and it's tough for me to say that because I truly wanted to love it.
My mind kept drifting and I just couldn't be in the story anymore. It didn't interest me at all and it was a struggle to get as far as I did with it.
It's safe to say that this one just wasn't my cup of tea!
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 . Doerr’s fiction has won four O. Henry Prizes and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. He has won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Rome Prize, the Story Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Award, and the Ohioana Book Award three times. Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho. Become a fan on Facebook and stay up-to-date on his latest publications.
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