August 1944, two months after D-Day, but the Germans hold onto Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast. They, and the French inhabitants, brace themselves for the coming Allied bombardment. Eighteen-year-old Werner Pfennig is holed up with his unit in a hotel. Close by, in a seafront apartment block, is sixteen-year-old Marie-Laure LeBlanc, blind and alone.
The perilous hours that follow are interspersed with their respective narratives, beginning in 1934 when Werner is in an orphanage in Germany destined for a working life down a coal mine, and Marie-Laure is coming to terms with her blindness in Paris, where her father is a curator / locksmith at the natural history museum. Even then they have a tenuous connection neither is aware of - Werner repairs a discarded radio and listens in secret to a Frenchman broadcasting scientific lectures; that radio ham lecturer is Marie-Laure’s great uncle in Saint-Malo. That connection will prove crucial ten years later.
Werner, inspired by the broadcasts, develops a precocious talent in radio communication that saves him from the pit but propels him early into Second World War combat. The war affects Marie-Laure too as she flees soon-to-be occupied Paris with the father, ending up in Saint-Malo. Their trajectories converge to dramatic effect, but only after they each experience trials and tribulations, losses and minor victories, which shape these formative years.
The lead characters demand empathy so we root for them. The more minor characters too, are well fleshed out and satisfyingly complex. The toxicity of the Nazi regime is portrayed but not overtly judged; the realities of sightlessness are laid bare but without mawkishness.
Overall, a very good
read.
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