Author: Anthony Doerr
Series: -
Genres: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Fourth State
Source: Paperback
Pages: 531
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SYNOPSIS: Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When Marie-Laure 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, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.
THE WORLD: The book is set during World War II specially in Germany and France at that time. Everyone knows about WWII and it hurts to talk about it. I think I won't talk about it.
CHARACTERS: The story is told mostly on the perspectives of Marie-Laurie, a blind teenager living in France with her dad when the invasion from Germany began, and Werner who is a german orphan with a passion for technology and engineering and thus was recruited by the Hitler Youth. Both characters are adorable and you fall in love immediately with them. Curiously, their stories run almost totally parallel and don't cross paths until well into the book which I was not expecting to be honest, I thought they would meet much earlier.
LOVE: There is no love in the sense of romantic love in this novel. All the love is purely because of family or friends and that was refreshing. Now, don't let yourself be fooled... prepare your tissues because the end is a killer.
LOVE: There is no love in the sense of romantic love in this novel. All the love is purely because of family or friends and that was refreshing. Now, don't let yourself be fooled... prepare your tissues because the end is a killer.
PLUS: I loved the main characters and that the story, while based on WWII, doesn't exactly focus on the war side but mostly on the relationships these characters had and how the war affected their lives. Oh! and let's not forget the story built around the Sea of Fire and how it is cursed!
PLUS 2: It makes several references, literally and scientifically, to light and how do we see or not see, the differences in spectrum, etc which fits 100% with the characters' situations, specially Marie-Laurie's since she's blind.
MINUS: There was a third perspective (other than the main characters') which I didn't like at all. Those chapters were boring to read.
OVERALL: 4.5 stars :) those boring chapters were not long neither too many but they made me take off points just because. On the other hand, although the end was a killer and I cried, it just adds to the book. The message of this book is mostly resolved around the end. Please take your time while reading this novel because its purpose is not to entertain (I mean yes, it needs to entertain but is not the main thing) but to convey a message and make you feel something deep within so please take it slowly to decipher all the parallels.
PLUS 2: It makes several references, literally and scientifically, to light and how do we see or not see, the differences in spectrum, etc which fits 100% with the characters' situations, specially Marie-Laurie's since she's blind.
MINUS: There was a third perspective (other than the main characters') which I didn't like at all. Those chapters were boring to read.
OVERALL: 4.5 stars :) those boring chapters were not long neither too many but they made me take off points just because. On the other hand, although the end was a killer and I cried, it just adds to the book. The message of this book is mostly resolved around the end. Please take your time while reading this novel because its purpose is not to entertain (I mean yes, it needs to entertain but is not the main thing) but to convey a message and make you feel something deep within so please take it slowly to decipher all the parallels.
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