I guess I cannot avoid books set in Nazi Germany. I heard this was a highly recommended, novel and was 2nd in the queue at the library and forgot about it until it appeared in my email, ready for delivery to my Kindle. Thus, my surprise when I started reading and it was set in Nazi Germany, starting in 1934, as well as Paris, France the same year. We actually have two stories being told, one in Germany, follows an orphan, Werner, living in a home for youths of father's who have died working in coal mines. The other story takes place in Paris, where a young seven year old girl, Marie Laure, blind, lives with her father, the charge de keys in a Paris museum.
We watch as Werner becomes an expert in electronics, especially radios and is sent to an elite school, helps to develop a transmitter but eventually questions his teacher and is sent to the front, as a radio technician. As we move back and forth between his experiences growing up, we see Marie Laure learn to navigate her house and surrounding neighborhood in Paris (her father built a wood replica of the neighbor hood). They are then forced to flee Paris when the Nazis take it over, eventually settling in her great Uncle's apartment in St. Malo, on the Atlantic coast. He, the uncle, is a recluse, having suffered severe trauma during WWI. As the Nazis get closer to St. Malo, Marie Laure's father is called to Paris, is taken as a prisoner, and remains so for the rest of the book. Marie draws her Uncle out of his shell, and they make do during the occupation. Meanwhile, Werner is sent all over Europe, but eventually ends up in St, Malo, hoping to discover who is sending signals to the allies. Of course, it's Marie Laure's Uncle, now a willing rebel against the Nazis. Werner realizes quickly that the young blind girl he has glimpsed, buying bread each morning, lives where the signal is being sent. He finally takes a stand, disobeys orders, listens to his humanity and does not report them. When the shelling gets so bad that the entire town is practically destroyed, he risks his life, saves Marie Laure, by leading her out of her Uncle's house, helping her to find friendly neighbor's who are fleeing from the city. Having finally stood up to the Nazi's, to malignant authority, Werner dies in a bombing raid. Marie Laure, however, survives and is reunited with her uncle, Etienne, but never does find out what happened to her father.
The story then jumps ahead, as Marie is married, heads a laboratory, and we also are witnesses to Jutta, Werner's sister, who eventually decides to find out what happened to her brother and her quest leads her back to Marie Laure, where she discovers how Werner saved Marie Laure's life. And we finally glimpse Marie Laure, in 2014, now an old women, with her grandson, who leads her into a garden where the story ends.
And interesting read, with another accurate sense of what it would have been like to live under Nazi occupation, or to live uncomfortably, most of your life, as a Nazi but in the end, find your humanity and act upon it.
No comments:
Post a Comment