Comments on: ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE by Anthony Doerr

By: girldetective

girldetective — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 15:55:30 +0000

Gert, I feel like such a crab for not liking All the Light, and you’re right–the book would have needed to enfold me so I could get over some of the weird writing bits (that I didn’t notice, for instance, in the first four books of Bone Clocks, but I was still utterly enthralled with it, then fell out of love with the book and the writing in book 5, so much that I couldn’t muster much love for 6). Something about the blind girl and the brilliant orphan put me off rather than drew me in.

By: Gert Loveday

Gert Loveday — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 02:04:41 +0000

Oh, I so disagree with you. I loved Doerr’s “Memory Wall” and I liked this almost as much. I thought the way he created the universe of the senses in Marie-Laure, parallelled by the unseen world of radiowaves for Werner, was masterly. But if you were being pulled up short and irritated by particular sentences or images, it sounds as if the book didnlt succeed for you from the beginning, i.e. didn’t draw you into that deeper level of absorption where you pass over such things. It did me, and I’m a pretty crabby reader!

By: girldetective

girldetective — Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:03:05 +0000

I loved the first 4 chapters of the Bone Clocks. Book 5 was too long, too much telling, and just silly; it bored me. Book 6 was too end heavy with its new world and new characters. I loved it, but not as part of the whole.

By: carolyn

carolyn — Sun, 15 Mar 2015 14:25:59 +0000

(but unlike you, I did really love Bone Clocks.)

By: carolyn

carolyn — Sun, 15 Mar 2015 14:23:15 +0000

I am reading the Marlon James and think I’ll probably put it down unfinished. It feels like a lot of work to read (many voices, in different almost dialects) with not that much payoff in terms of entertaining plot or something like that.