Krishna
It would not be an understatement to describe this book as one of the best books I read recently.
This is the way a story should be told. Crisp brilliant descriptions, evoking passion for the subject matter in a reader’s mind is hard to achieve but Anthony does this effortlessly.
Starts in an interesting way. Vignettes of bombs falling in France, a blind girl familiarizing herself with a model replica of a building, Werner Pfennig, a 17 year old private hiding in a cellar since bombs are being thrown on his building. All already knitting together in a war story with WW II in the backdrop. The bombs are falling everywhere.
By the way, the War stays as a pure backdrop to the story and gives colour to the story but the story is not about the war at all.
The story goes back to the girl, whose father makes her independent after she becomes blind. He is a curator in a museum and lives in the same building and he trains her on where is what. He is also a woodworker in his spare time and he creates a replica of the museum.
Werner’s childhood reveals that he is fascinated with machines. He finds an abandoned broken radio and fixes it. He grows up in an orphanage managed by Frau Elena. He listens to broadcasts in Germany where the tone subtly changes to show ‘ hooked nose villains who destroy everything due to greed’.
Lovely descriptions of escalating menace and how Werner and the girl cope. Girl imbibing classics in Braille. Werner trying to learn everything he could and dreaming of a life working in a scientific field. Hunger for knowledge. Also aware of the German army approaching. Beautifully said.
When Werner is called in to repair an expensive radio by a senior captain in Nazi army, he manages to do so and impress him. He now wants Werner to go to advanced science training because “Germany needs people like him”.
He goes to an elite school where his mathematical genius and expertise with mechanical things is noticed and he is chosen for special work for the Fuhrer.
Meanwhile Maurie and her father go to her uncle, who is a recluse. When all the radios are confiscated by the occupying German orders, he goes to pieces. The father, meanwhile is carrying a diamond that seems to be the true rare diamond. He leaves Marie to go back to the museum but is arrested and transferred to Germany.
The brutal training given to boys opens Werner’s eyes to the evil nature of the regime he is being asked to serve. The weak boys are flogged mercilessly.
Werner gets increasingly uneasy with the culture and wants his sister Jutta’s clear headed thinking desperately. He thinks he has let his friend Frankie down badly, especially when the latter gets battered and brain damaged. And finally has to leave.
Marie-Laure gets letters from her father assuring her that he is safe and is looked after extremely well. She does not know how much to belive. She discovers the sea and also a grotto where snails abound.
Werner learns to triangulate a radio transmission unerringly.
He is recruited into the army with false age registered, after he tells the doctor he wants to leave and is refused. He meets his friend Frank and finds him a vegetable from all the brain injury his beatings caused.
Werner goes to the front and gets reunited with his old friend, the gentle giant Volkheimer. In the station, when Werner sees prisoners being taken in inhuman condition and resting on the bodies of their own dead, it shocks him – and you, while reading. Excellent narration. He continues to find transmissions by triangulation and Volkheimer goes and kills them. Contrary to propaganda, Werner finds that the ‘criminals’ are poor, unprepared people trying to fight back. When a mother and a young kid are casually killed, he gets his doubts about what he is doing and realizes that Jutta, his sister, has always been right.
His doubts overwhelm him and he starts protecting the numbers which are causing great havoc. The Major confronts her when she is in a private grotto with snails and she tells him what he wants to know without realizing this. He is on the hunt for the Sea of Flames, the flawless diamond. He locates three replicas and finally knows where the fourth one is.
Marie- Laure gets stuck in the house and hides in a cupboard when the Major finally finds the house in his search for the Sea of Flames diamond. However, the Major is dying of terminal cancer. Great stuff. Great storytelling.
The storytelling moves forward and backwards but with devastating effect. You realize that Werner and Volkheimer are going to be trapped in the basement of a building that was destroyed by bombing with no way out. You wait for it. You realize that the major is going to trap the blind girl alone in her own house. You wait for it. Just brilliant.
It all ties in together very neatly. An excellent book worth reading every word. What an explosive ending. Deeply satisfying for having read it. A lesson on how to write fiction.
Some would consider the long epilog, after the main story ends, as a let down or a distraction but I found it fascinating.
9/ 10
– – Krishna (Dec 2018)