All the Light We Cannot See is about a blind girl named Marie-Laure, who lives in Paris, France, in the 1930s. When the Nazis invade in 1940, she and her father are forced to leave the city. They escape to a countryside town to hide with Marie-Laure's great uncle, Etienne. After several months, Marie-Laure's father gets arrested. She continues to live with Etienne, and they start passing on secret signals to aid the French Resistance movement.
Werner Pfennig is a German orphan with a hobby of listening to science and music programs on an old radio. Developing a talent for fixing radios, he is later hired by the Nazis to help them track enemy radio signals during the war. One day, he picks up a signal that is coming from Etienne's home in France.
Anyway, Marie-Laure and Werner meet and develop a strong relationship. These two poor souls try to find a way to escape this horrible war together, but can they?
Anthony Doerr, the author of All the Light We Cannot See, is from Cleveland, Ohio. Critics have praised Doer's writing for his short, sharp sentences and attention to detail. All the Light We Cannot See is his second novel, which was published in 2014. It quickly became a New York Times best-seller and won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The amazing novel gives readers a look at the ugly face of war. Throughout the book, we see how war can destroy people's lives in the blink(眨眼) of an eye. Characters such as Etienne and Marie-Laure's father disappear in an instant and are never heard from again. However, war is also shown to bring out the best in people. The characters who survive must show great courage and strength when they face challenges.
Another important idea is the importance of science and technology. Doerr suggests that technologies, such as the radio, are helpful to society if they are used with good intentions. However, if technologies fall into the hands of evil(邪恶), they can cause great destruction.
