![]() ![]() Although they are eventually separated, we remember Daniel LeBlanc, for he has saved his daughter from helpless self-pity and once he is gone, her self-reliant intelligence, nurtured by him, allows her to carry on most bravely and eventually to inspire others. Her blindness is convincingly represented, and the steady love of her locksmith father (who builds scale models of the neighborhoods she must learn to negotiate with her cane) makes her story both more beautiful and more believable. Marie-Laure is an exquisitely realized creation. ![]() Although the narrative consists largely of flashbacks, it’s easy to follow because it focuses most sharply on only two characters, the blind child Marie-Laure LeBlanc, who takes part in the French Resistance, and the very Aryan-looking Werner Pfennig, a technocratic private in the service of the Thousand-Year Reich. Told mostly in the present tense, in short and usually pointed chapters, the story moves briskly and efficiently toward its climactic encounter during the Allied bombing of St.-Malo, France, a couple of months after D-Day. I must blame Anthony Doerr for lost sleep, because once I started reading his new novel, “All the Light We Cannot See,” there was no putting it down. ![]() ![]() (This book was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014. ![]()
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