Ich habe die Original-Version des Buches gelesen; "All the Light We Cannot See"
It is 1934, pre-war Germany and pre-war France.
Marie-Laure is being asked whether she knows how diamonds grow: “By adding microscopic layers, a few thousand atoms every month, each atop the next. Millenia after millenia. That’s how stories accumulate, too.“ p 51 She loses eyesight at a very young age – and will be tought from then on by her single dad, head locksmith of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, along with many of his well-meaning colleagues. Thus, the girl will also learn about a mythological diamond, the Sea of Flames, allegedly hidden within the museum, priceless but doomed to make its respective owner live healthy forever while all his beloved ones miserable.
Werner is born a miner’s son near Essen, Zollhaus. He and his sister Jutta lost their father in a mining accident at an early age to live poorly but under the loving protection of Frau Elena in an orphanage. He is doomed to follow the region’s tradition and enter the mines at fifteen, no matter how gifted at repairing any given electrical device, radios of the neighbours in particular, he is. „Before long Werner can draw a map in his head of the locations of nearly every radio in their district…“ p 62
Both children share the fate to feel trapped by limitations, hindered to be who they wish to be. Both question the world around them, are eager to learn and bright. Both experience love – and each of them is put to the test of resisting the temptations Second World War imposes upon them. Doerr’s wonderful story will soon link their individual lives, if yet in a very distant, particular way. The storyline is chronological, though skipping in between different time levels. You will learn a lot about snails, gems, birds, and radio technology – and it did not feel a slight bit boring to me! It is in the way Doerr employs words – he may have wonderful general observations, he may use lengthy breathless sentences in moments of fear.
I did love the book – but still have to admit I am not capable to sum up which story “All the Light We Cannot See“ is actually telling. Is it on fear and hope, on holding out and giving up, on love and letting go, on friendship and failure. I did have the same “issue“ already with Doerr’s „Memory Wall“; I loved it but could not have pinned it down to “which (one) story is it that the author wants to tell us“. Basically, to me, Doerr is a great storyteller capable to link characters in very peculiar settings by exceptional situations – and enthralls the reader by the way he wraps him up in his words. The author will leave you pondering on trap words that link his stories together – here, it is word chains such as light, seeing, blind, perception, orientation, maps probably; same as light (waves), radio (waves), waves, ocean, transmission of messages, of meaning and so on – if it is does not fit your style of reading to find such links in a story and to dwell upon them, then Doerr is not your author!
There is a small number of breaches in Doerr’s story, like a German living in 1974’s Pforzheim who does receive pay checks from his employer – no way, everbody in Germany transfers wages directly to bank accounts (p. 498). Same, Jutta will later in life be a teacher for 6th graders – for algebra. That, again, is US kind of thinking – the German subject will be called maths, even if the topic at school might be algebra - and there are no end-of year exams at that age, they will rather have several ones throughout the year (p . 500). That will still make this story a 4,5 to me given how much I enjoyed it!
