Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See is available on Audible as a 16 hrs 2 mins unabridged audiobook, narrated by Zach Appelman.
Publisher’s Summary
Winner of the Audie Award for Fiction
*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti*
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.
Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).
Audiobook Details
- Narrated by: Zach Appelman
- Length: 16 hrs 2 mins
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Release year: 2014
- Audible category: Literature & Fiction / Genre Fiction / Literary Fiction
Listener Ratings
All the Light We Cannot See holds an average listener rating of 4.5/5 from 66386 Audible ratings.
On Audible, ratings for this title break down into narration performance and story separately:
- Performance (narration): 4.6/5
- Story: 4.5/5
- 5-star ratings: 67% of all ratings
What Audible Listeners Are Saying
4/5 stars — “An outlyer’s opinion”
This will likely enrage the other reviewers, but – and again this is just my opinion – I thought the writing was far too much an attempt at being poetic. Far too many metaphors, far too many dependent clauses – all, seemingly, in trying to create some beautiful prose. It did not for me. I did love the story and I was engaged in the characters and I did keep reading, but this despite the over-poetic approach and – kack – the horrible narration. His French was embarrassing and he simply did not impress me. But to each his own, right? I will now go and hide from the wrath of those who wrote of their love for the book.— Lionel, Audible listener
5/5 stars — “extraordinary book and reading!”
Yes. Every sentence of this book is a gem and deserves to be savored. The characters gripped me from the start. The plot carried me forward –as well as the flowing prose. don’t have one The blind girl, of course. Doerr’s use of active verbs astounds. Zach Appleman’s narration is superb and does this wonderful book justice. I’ve recommended the book to all my friends and book club.— PatriciaB-55, Audible listener
5/5 stars — “A great historical fiction”
I loved that it was a story of a personal human side of the war and not so much about the war. It kind of reminded me of The Book Thief. Also the author did a great job describing things and places so that you felt like you were right there. There were memorable moments that were shocking and then memorable moments that made you smile. I loved the beginning account of Marie-Laure and her dad working at the museum and then later her relationship with her great uncle. Marie-Laure The great uncle because of his great imagination and the fact he has been through so much.— Tammy, Audible listener
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