A Beautiful Waste: Pace in ‘All The Light We Cannot See’

Matching the urgency of the plot, I was expecting a tighter and more abrupt writing style. However, like his prose, Doeer wants the reader to slow down and consider moments in history that light doesn’t often touch.

Name: All The Light We Cannot See

Author: Anthony Doerr

Published: 2014

Whilst watching the trailer for the upcoming Netflix adaptation of All The Light We Cannot See, I was reminded of the chilling beauty of this book. The childish marvel. The curiosity. However, a movie adaptation may be more effective than the book itself, as it removes its sprawling nature. A film has time restraints where a book can be intensely detailed, and a writer can indulge in petty conversations where a film maker can’t.

Doerr’s prose is enticingly beautiful but languid. Self-indulgent. In a word: slow. There were moments of striking beauty, however I think the urgency inherent to the plot was drowned by his writing. Urgency and panic is everywhere: from a Hitler Youth training camp, Paris in the first days of the Occupation to a trans-Europe scavenge for lost gems and the final days of the Nazi regime. Typically, you’d expect a tighter and more abrupt writing style. However Doerr perhaps want the reader to slow down and consider moments in history that light doesn’t often touch.

Honestly, I had never before read about a character supportive of the Hitler Youth, or considered the perspective of Germans remaining in Berlin during the Russian occupation. They’re both subjects I’ll research more after reading this book; Schulpforta was darkly fascinating. Similarly with Marie-Laure, it’s rare that a blind protagonist takes center stage in a historical novel, nevermind one living one of the last German-held towns in France. I loved when Marie-Laure’s fiery cook and her friends created their own Résistance. The intricate dedication Doerr has put into his research shines through and my favourite part of the novel was the historical settings.

Can you tell that I’m trying to avoid simply condemning the novel’s pace as boring? Another possible redemption of the writing style is the way it highlights Marie-Laure’s blindness. In a way, the reader lives as she does through lavishly description of smells, tastes and textures. Nevertheless, I must admit that the middle of this book dragged for me. Werner didn’t have a character development more than a character leap – it felt like there was no backing to his ultimate decision. Time speeds by, yet there’s no sense of Werner and Marie-Laure changing through adolescence in such a small cast. It was only in the last fifty pages that I felt myself pulled again into the world, and what had been factual became fiction once more.

The finale of this book is worth whatever issues of pace there may have been previously. The different strands of story had only previously been tenuously linked by a 30 year old, educational radio show. However, Doerr effortlessly weaves them together into a devastating tapestry of love, loss and the absurdity of life. Devastating in its humanity.

Finally, I want to add that this is not a love story. In any way. I’ve read newspaper reviews calling it ‘girl meets boy’, and yes, a girl does meet a boy and while they may have a connection, they do not pursue that. They can’t. Given the historical context, it would be implausible. I think that it’s ridiculous to market it as such, when it is not a romance. It’s so much more than that.

I’m interested to see if Doerr writes more on the 21st century, because I loved his descriptions of social media (the newest form of light we cannot see). However, the analogue focus of the book, on radios and rationing and the senses, is inherit to its style and incredible exploration of the moments in history that light doesn’t often touch.