julianne
Senior Insider
Quite simply, this book is now on my "best ever" list. It follows the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner during World War II and beyond, beginning separately--Marie-Laure in Paris and Werner in Germany--until their stories converge in Saint-Malo. Marie-Laure is blind and the intensity of her other senses---smell, sound,feel,taste,warmth,chill---amplifies her character. Her beloved father builds her a miniature of their neighborhood so she can know it by touch. Werner is an orphan whose talents and obsession with radios brings him into the Nazi Youth movement. His devotion to his sister, Jutta, is the very antithesis of his new role and he is conflicted.
This is not an easy book to read. You absorb it and then, at times, re-read a paragraph or two to ensure that you are in their moment. In interspersing chapters the experiences of the two main characters are told. In little flashes of description, the world they occupy is vividly portrayed. The LA Times described it thus---Ten yours in the writing, it is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer "whose sentences never fail to thrill."
This is not an easy book to read. You absorb it and then, at times, re-read a paragraph or two to ensure that you are in their moment. In interspersing chapters the experiences of the two main characters are told. In little flashes of description, the world they occupy is vividly portrayed. The LA Times described it thus---Ten yours in the writing, it is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer "whose sentences never fail to thrill."
