Another of the seemingly endless WWII historical novels, this one deservedly won the 2015 Nobel prize for fiction. Like Kristen Hannah’s The Nightingale and Pierre Lamaitre’s Au Renoir La Haut, it is set mainly in occupied France, in this case, in the small Brittany port city of Saint-Malo, as well as Paris. Narrated by the author in the present tense throughout, it covers the entire war time period, with follow up of several surviving characters up to 2014; the author makes extensive use of the well-worn time shift literary device for the events of the war period, but the time frame and the numerous characters are not particularly hard to follow. The wartime history of the city seems accurate as far as I can tell, although the technical skills of the secret resistance radio developers and the elaborate scaled down model of the city that the blind girl uses to navigate may be exaggerated.
The poignancy of the losses in war, the cruelty as well as heroism of warriors on all sides of the conflict (a Nazi soldier with increasing unease about their goals risks his life to sabotage their plans) and the stamina, determination, and bravery of civilians and soldiers alike are all vividly displayed. But this is not what makes this story uniquely beautiful. The rich scenery and the graphic characterizations are intertwined with observations of universal truths, not just about Homo sapiens, but about all life and all of nature, and the transience and frailty of our life on earth and of our relationships. The blind teen, Marie-Laure Leblanc, with overly developed senses of touch, taste, smell and hearing to compensate for her lack of vision, almost seems to shout in defiance to the reader “Don’t give up”.
Two quotes may give you some sense of the beauty of the observations.
“At Madam’s suggestion, they lie down in the weeds and Marie-Laure listens to the honeybees mine the flowers and tries to imagine their journeys as Etienne described them; each worker following a rivulet of odor, looking for the ultraviolet patterns in the flowers, filling baskets in her hind legs with pollen grains, then navigating, drunk and heavy, all the way home.”
And a great analogy to the world of war propaganda:
“Do you know what happens, Etienne, … when you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water?…It jumps out. But do you know what happens when you put a frog in a pot of cool water and then slowly bring it to a boil? …. The frog cooks”.
Thanks, Andra.
The Passionate Reader 