All the Light We Cannot See

Plot

Set in occupied France during World War II, the novel centers on a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths eventually cross.

In 1934, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is the daughter of a widowed master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris whom she often accompanies to work. Marie suffered from rapidly deteriorating eyesight secondary to juvenile cataracts, becoming fully blind at the age of 6. Her father enriches her environment, crafting a wooden scale-model of their neighborhood in Paris for her to memorize by touch. He spends hours walking with her to various points in the actual neighborhood and supervising her so that she is eventually able to navigate independently. He uses her birthday as an opportunity to develop her sense of touch, providing increasingly intricate puzzle boxes every year. Her father provides new novels in braille to read. She becomes entranced by the imagined worlds like those that she explores in her edition of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

The museum where Marie-Laure's father works as a locksmith is rumored to house an exquisite blue diamond of immeasurable value, with beautiful dancing "red flames" at its center: According to legend, however, the diamond is cursed: whoever keeps the "Sea of Flames" cannot die but their loved ones will be stricken with unending misfortunes.

Meanwhile, in Germany, 8-year-old Werner Pfennig is an orphan in the coal-mining town of Zollverein. He and his sister Jutta find a broken short-wave radio behind the Children’s Home where they live. Werner manages to repair the radio and his natural skill for circuitry becomes apparent. He and Jutta tune in and listen to a variety of programs, including a regular broadcast from France hosted by an older gentleman who shares stories about the world of science, skillfully framed so that even younger listeners can understand.

When the Nazis invade France in 1940, Marie-Laure and her father flee from Paris to the coastal town of Saint-Malo to take refuge with her great-uncle Etienne, a recluse suffering shell-shock from the Great War. Etienne spends all his days indoors, but reveals to Marie-Laure that along with his deceased brother Henri, the two used to broadcast lessons to children from a large radio inside the chimney, with these lessons being the ones Werner and Jutta listened to. Unbeknownst to Marie-Laure, her father has been entrusted with the Sea of Flames or one of three exact copies. The four jewels look very much alike, although 3 are worthless fakes. As a diversion, each of the four is given to a different protector, none of whom know whether blue stone is the real priceless gem or the look-alike fake. Each protector is charged to keep his jewel out of the Germans’ hands. Marie-Laure's father conceals his stone in a small wooden replica of Etienne’s house, a removable puzzle box which fits within the city model he makes of Saint-Malo. This model is placed at the foot of Marie-Laure's bed, where she spends hours learning the new town with her fingers before finally venturing out.

The father, who has been noticed drawing buildings and measuring distances in the town, is arrested by the Germans on suspicion of espionage and disappears into the Nazi prison camp system, leaving Marie-Laure alone with Etienne and Madame Manec, (who is Etienne's longtime maid and housekeeper).

Soon, a Nazi gemologist, Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel, is tasked with evaluating confiscated jewels, and eventually set out on the trail of the Sea of Flames. He has a malignant tumor and becomes ill during his search, which he still continues while he endures treatment and the ravages of the relapse. He finds his way to the Natural History Museum and learns that duplicate gems have been made. He traces each of them. The legend of immortality that is bestowed by the jewel is something he learns, and although he does not fully believe it, he clings to a hope that it might after all be true and that possession of the real jewel might save him from the growing tumors.

Meanwhile, Madame Manec participates in the Resistance along with other local women. These activities have some success, but Madame Manec becomes ill and unable to participate. With Marie-Laure's father imprisoned, and Etienne unable to go outdoors, Marie-Laure begins to make trips to the bakery store to collect notes hidden within bread loaves, containing information that Etienne broadcasts from his radio.

Werner's passion for science and his gift for radio mechanics earn him a place at a nightmarish training school for the Nazi military elite where, he’s told, “You will all surge in the same direction at the same pace toward the same cause. ... You will eat country and breathe nation.” Werner obeys, and his discipline and scientific aptitude carry him into the Wehrmacht, where he proves adept at finding the senders of illegal radio transmissions. Werner works with Volkheimer, a large soldier coming from the same school as Werner. But he is increasingly sickened by what happens when he tracks a radio signal to its source and a young girl is killed. He is also haunted by his memories of the Frenchman’s broadcasts, which remind him of a time when science seemed an instrument of wonder, not death.

Werner and Marie-Laure’s paths converge in 1944, when Allied forces have landed on the beaches of Normandy and Werner’s unit is dispatched to Saint-Malo to trace and destroy the sender of mysterious intelligence broadcasts. Etienne and Marie-Laure have been making these broadcasts for the French Resistance. Werner ultimately decides to allow the broadcasts to continue and eventually saves Marie-Laure from von Rumpel. Although only together for a short time, they form a strong bond. As they flee from Saint-Malo, Marie-Laure places the Sea of Flames inside a grotto flooded with seawater from the tide. Werner sends Marie-Laure away into safety but becomes gravely ill. Just as he begins to recover, he accidentally steps on a landmine at night, which immediately kills him.

Thirty years later, Jutta, Werner's sister, receives information from Werner's old associate and friend, Frank Volkheimer, that contains information on Werner's death as well as a house from the model that Marie-Laure's father had made. Jutta travels to France with her son Max, where she meets Marie-Laure in the museum at which her father had worked. Marie-Laure discovers that the miniature house in which the Sea of Flames had been hidden, which she put to sea with Werner in a hidden grotto in Saint-Malo, was with Werner when he died. The story ends with Marie-Laure, now 86 years old, walking with her grandson in the streets of Paris where she grew up.

Characters

Reception

As of August 21, 2016, the book had spent 118 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction. The New York Times also named it one of its 10 best books of the year. The novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Sales tripled the week after it lost to Redeployment by Phil Klay.

The novel won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

The novel was runner-up for the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction and won the 2015 Ohioana Library Association Book Award for Fiction.