Doerr is a mesmerizing story teller and he had my attention after the first chapter. The book was impossible to put down after that. His sentences are economical and his chapters short. With this book, it is a blessing because it is so engrossing, that should you need to attend to other things, the end of a chapter is just a few pages away.
I loved this story which was chosen as one of the 10 best books of 2014 by The New York Times. The story which begins in 1934 is told mostly in the present tense until we near the end which takes place in 1974. It is essentially the tale of two young children, one German, one French who grow up during the war years. The chapters alternate between the two until their lives intersect during the German bombing of St. Malo.
We first meet the six year old blind girl, Marie-Laure Le Blanc who lives in Paris with her father, Daniel, who is a locksmith and works in Paris's Natural History Museum. Daniel is an accomplished wood worker and has built a miniature replica of the their neighborhood which helps Marie-Laure find her away around. Marie-Laure and her father manage to escape Paris when the Germans occupy the city and begin their pillage of valuable paintings and museum collections. The reader soon suspects that a famous diamond called the Sea of Flame has been entrusted to Daniel by the museum director who knows the Germans will be searching for it.
The parallel story is that of Werner Pfennig a young German orphan who lives near the Essen coal mines which claimed the life of his father. He and his sister Jutta are being brought up in an orphanage run by a kindly french woman. Werner shows an early ability to repair radios and as a young engineering prodigy is awarded a scholarship to a famous military school called Schulpforta. Conditions at the school are brutal as these young boys are being trained to obey without question and ultimately become the elite of Hitler's army. Here Werner makes two lifelong friendships, but here he also questions the morality of what he is being trained to do.
Eventually Marie-Laure and her father safely make their way to St. Malo where her great uncle, Etienne lives with his fearless housekeeper, Madame Manec, a wonderfully drawn character who runs the household and is involved with the French Resistance. Daniel quickly goes to work making a scale model of St. Malo for Marie-Laure, and one day when he is taking measurements of the neighborhood, he is captured by the Germans who suspect he is a spy. Not long after this, Marie-Laure and Etienne join the resistance and begin making clandestine radio transmissions to British and Americans.
As the story develops, it is inevitable that the lives of Werner and Marie-Laure will diverge, and the diamond plays a large part in moving this along. Doerr may not be the most masterful writer one has read, but his ability to spin a tale is indeed masterful. While reading, I was aware that the writer's style and word choices were American rather than those a French or German character might use, but the story was so very good, that I hardly noticed until later when I reflected on the book. I highly recommend this book to all readers who love a good well-written yarn that is impossible to set down. Happy reading.
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