Embark on HOPE

Pause and ponder the question. It’s a good one.

I get inspired by magnificent stories.

The players… the broken and brilliant characters. Extraordinary circumstances.

Current story…Marie-Laure and Werner !

Thank you Anne for the recommendation, validation from Abby…and thank you Anthony Doerr…I will open my eyes today, and see what I can with them before they close forever!

‘All The Lights We Cannot See’, written by Anthony Doerr. Historical fiction.

A war story, a coming-of-age story, a philosophical fable, this is a novel that constantly oscillates between the moral uncertainties of life and the chiselled precision of the natural world that surrounds us.

Between the political morass of war and the stupendous beauty of organisms, the ocean, the human brain.

The language is so fantastically precise – Anthony Doerr does things with verbs that make entire paragraphs sing

– that the visual component of this book is quite astounding.

In the end, what this novel illuminates is the miraculous impact that seminal events have on the rest of our lives, whether it be the magic of radio broadcasts on the mysteries of science or the extraordinary adventures of Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea”.

The author explains in his own words what the title means. “The title is a reference first and foremost to all the light we literally cannot see. That is the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are beyond the ability of human eyes to detect. It’s also a metaphorical suggestion that there are countless invisible stories still buried within World War II. The stories of ordinary children, for example, are a kind of light we do not typically see. Ultimately, the title is intended as a suggestion that we spend too much time focused on only a small slice of the spectrum of possibility.”

All the Light We Cannot See is haunting. That’s how I would describe it. From the chillingly beautiful prose, to the realization of what the title actually means: that underneath the surface of history, there is light – and stories – that have not been seen; that have gone untold. Scientifically, we only see a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum; historically, we only see a small portion of the story.

This book is a treasure.