You know how every year you see a movie come out and you think to yourself "oh this is an award movie". I'm not saying that you think the movie is - you know - good. Sure you might also think it's good, but what you know is that it is a movie that was made to get an award. Well All the Light We Cannot See is like that.
Now to clarify, I did enjoy this book and I see why it became so popular. The acclaim is warranted.
But when I was reading it, I constantly felt like I was reading a pulitzer winning book. It was just meant for it. And part of the reason is because the prose is tight. It's the shortest 450 page novel I've ever read. Every chapter I finished made me feel like I could read another one.
The style of it all was captivating. With the short chapters and constantly changing perspectives it kept you in each character's shoes. One thing I think a lot of books with multiple perspectives struggle to do is keep you informed on what's happening in the other story line. By keeping everything so short, you never forget what is happening in the parallel story. Paired with the jumps back and forth in time, this made the book impossible to put down.
When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?
The only reason I did not give the book a perfect rating honestly is because I didn't really understand the way it ended. I don't know what I expected. I didn't exactly think it was going to have some clean and perfect ending gift wrapped for me, but I didn't understand why it ended the way it did. [Spoilers] I didn't feel connected to the future Jutta and . I felt so connected to those moments during the war with Werner and Marie-Laure that I hardly considered the future after it. Maybe there was some significance in that?
It was just one of those endings that felt like it should leave some lasting impression on me, but it didn't. And maybe that's my own fault. Either way, it was still an incredible read that I would recommend to just about anyone.