read: 12.01.19 - 21.01.19

Summary

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.

Review

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm a little bit of a historical fiction binge and so I picked this up because I needed some more! I really enjoyed this book, and thought it had so many charming and interesting qualities which really made it stand out.

I'd heard a lot of good things about this book before I read it so I kind of knew that it was going to be good, especially seeing as it is set in Nazi Germany which is my favourite period. I loved the writing in this book, and thought the intertwining of stories was really well done. The mixture of characters and the different ideas and thoughts they brought into the book were really interesting. I especially liked the character of Werner and thought his character arc was really beautiful.

I also loved reading a book from the perspective of someone who was blind during the war as I think it provided an incredibly unique narrative that I hadn't really thought of before. It made every already terrifying situation even more interesting because of the extra challenges Marie-Laure had to face in order to survive. Overall, I thought it was a wonderful read!

rating: 8.5/10