If you've been wondering whether or not to tackle the chunkster that is this year's Pulitzer prize winning novel, hopefully the quote below will tempt you to jump right in.I've been reading All the Light We Cannot See since last week. It is an extraordinary story, so well told, so beautifully realised, but it did take me a little while to get into its rhythm.
Set in France and Germany during WWII, the story is told from two main points of view in brief, elegant chapters across several time frames. Even though I've read lots of books like this and I could always see the potential of this particular story, I did find it slow to warm.
Fortunately, I persisted, and I hope you do too, because eventually you get to a point where you cannot put this book down!
Let me give you a little snippet from page 71 of my edition:
Those last nights in Paris, walking home with her father at midnight, the huge book clasped against her chest, Marie-Laure thinks she can sense a shiver beneath the air, in the pauses between the chirring of the insects, like the spider cracks of ice when too much weight is set upon it. As if all the time the city has been no more than a scale model built by her father and the shadow of a great hand has fallen over it.
I hope this tempts you to give All the Light We Cannot See a go.
If you love literary historical fiction as I do, you wont regret one single word.
But that's enough dawdling for me - it's time for me to finish the last dozen or so chapters!
This post is linking up to Thursday Quotables hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies & Dreaming of France.