This post is coming at you early Wednesday morning after spending the majority of the night listening to tornado warnings in my area……which means I’m tired! Please keep north Alabama in your prayers. There were many tornadoes in the middle of the night and a some fatalities.
Today’s post will be short and sweet because I only read one book in the month of November, and the rest of my time was spent watching Hallmark Christmas movies 😉
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. 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, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.
In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.
This book wasn’t my favorite (over 500 pages!!), but I’m glad I can say that I’ve read it. It was told mainly from the point of view of Werner, a young German boy who ends up joining the Nazi regime, and Marie-Laure, a blind French girl. I knew their paths would cross at some point in the book, and I think that’s what kept me reading. One thing I really did enjoy about this book was the ending. Doerr wrapped up everything, and his ending made me wonder what it was like to live in Europe after the horrors of Hitler–what was it like to live 20-30 years after and to be a Jew interacting with a former Nazi. Very interesting. I would recommend this book if you really enjoy historical fiction!
