I think this is the first time I’ve read a book about WWII that had absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust. The only time the word “holocaust” was used, was to describe the riot of reds and oranges that blossomed on the horizon after some bombings. I thought that was an interesting word choice for a WWII novel.
That’s not to say this book is trying to say the Holocaust never happened. It mentions the slow but steady demonization and ostracizing of the Jews and refers to concentration camps (though never by that name). It’s just that the book chooses not to focus on that issue.
Instead it focuses on two children trying to make sense of their world as it changes very quickly. Puberty is confusing enough as it is, but to have to deal with the radical changes that those growing up in Europe in the early 1940s had to deal with must have been especially challenging.
The book is about a German boy (Werner) and a French girl (Marie-Laure), growing up during the war. They’re about the same age and their lives intersect in weird, minuscule ways before they ever meet. They only spend about half a day together, but Werner manages to save Marie-Laure’s life three times before they part ways.
Marie-Laure is blind, but she’s not helpless. She’s brave and determined and she manages to survive the better part of a week all on her own while the town is being bombed. Part of her survival may or may not be due to a blue diamond her father left in her care before he returned to Paris. On his trip, he becomes one of the many during WWII to get arrested and disappear without a trace. His disappearance (and the whole invasion of France) also may or may not be related to the blue diamond.
The blue diamond has flecks of red deep in its center, so it’s called the “Sea of Flames”. Legend has it that whoever has the diamond cannot die, but bad things tend to happen to those close to the owner. Tragic accidents, deathly illnesses, etc. The book never confirms or denies whether the Sea of Flames really is cursed, which I appreciate. Those kinds of things are better left unanswered.
Werner is very smart and very good with radios. As a young boy, he finds an old radio that’s been discarded. He fixes it up, gets it working again, and he, his sister, and the other kids in the orphanage get to listen to it for an hour every day.
Then the radio programs start changing. They become more and more limited. Soon they’re not allowed to listen to anything that gets broadcast from outside Germany. Werner’s sister, Jutta, wants to continue listening to their foreign programs, but Werner is tempted by talk of sending him to a special school. They’ll take him away from the mines (where their parents died, along with so many others) and teach him all sorts of things, including how to build and repair radios. He can have a future (something he’s never had before).
But the school feeds the students propaganda. Werner goes along with it, not because he believes the propaganda, but because he’s afraid of what will happen if he speaks out. Nazi Germany was not a place that encouraged individuality so Werner became very good at holding his tongue. But he worries about disappointing his sister and his friends. It’s very telling that he doesn’t worry about letting himself down.
Anthony Doerr does an excellent job of weaving the lives of these two adolescents together. For most of the book, they spin around each other, just barely touch, then spin away again. They touch in very minor ways, such as the radio programs and a certain song, and I delighted in putting all the clues together and waiting for them to finally meet.
If I have one complaint about the book, it’s that it got too wordy, especially towards the end. I don’t have to know who dies in a battle that took place outside the story. I certainly don’t need to know their whole alternate life story if they hadn’t died. It deviated from the plot without serving any purpose, but those moments were pretty rare. On the whole, it was an exceptionally well-written book that kept me reading late into the night.
What did you guys read this week? Any books that followed you around until you give up and read them? I want to hear all about it in the comments!
Photo credit: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs / <a href=”http://foter.com/”>Foter</a> / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/”>Public Domain Mark 1.0</a>