March 2016 Book Club

Book and Wine glassWe read “All the Light We Cannot See,” by Anthony Doerr for our February’s book club.  It was the Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction for 2015.

Not everyone in our book club likes to read novels set in war time, they are inherently sad and violent, but this book isn’t too graphic.

Survivors are not often inclined to talk about their experiences, some only give a condensed version when asked. I have heard a few brief stories of what the war was like.  My in-laws walked from the Ukraine into Germany and were placed in a camp during World War II.  They were more afraid of the Russians than the Germans.  On the arduous walk my mother-in-law, a young girl at the time, got sick with tuberculosis.  A German woman took her in and nursed her back to health.  Imagine what that must have been like.  Refugees struggling for food and water, walking endlessly amidst bombs and soldiers not knowing who was friendly or foe.

Doerr’s blind protagonist, Marie-Laure, had to walk with her father from Paris to Saint-Malo. They slept in fields or bombed-out buildings and ate scraps of food not knowing what they would find when they reached their destination. You felt their fear and apprehension.

How do you handle the chaos of war?  What would you do to survive? Where’s your line between good and evil? The book will provide plenty of discussions for book clubs.

Our book club liked the book and recommends it. See my complete review under Reviews on our site.

 

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