I came into this book knowing only that it was about WWII, and written by Tony Doerr. He used to visit my English department when I was in college at the University of Idaho. I liked The Shell Collector collection of short stories, so I was looking forward to my first novel of his.
He didn’t disappoint, but he also didn’t hit a home run. His writing is strong, evocative if not iconoclastic. Interesting if not engrossing. Easy, but sometimes beautiful too. I read part of it, and audiobooked part of it, and I think I preferred listening to it—a clear indicator for my personal metric that the book lacks a flair for description and dialogue, but doesn’t disappoint at the same time. This seems contradictory, I know. But the book is obviously edited well, as far as the words on the page go, but maybe a little too well. Not everybody can have a writing calling card that sets them apart from the rest, but not everybody needs one. I will not be trying to write like Doerr, but I didn’t feel like the book was a slog to read.
The novel jumps back and forth in time in interesting ways, but I do not plan to emulate his tactic. This narrative time traveling leaves cliff hangers all over the place, allowing the whole to feel much more pulpy than I anticipated. And that’s maybe a good way to put this: it’s a book aimed squarely at a broad base of the reading public. Some others of Doerr’s tactics help drive this point home for me, but the cliffhanger endings, quick chapters, and jumping back and forth point to a desire for readability that might not be my personal favorite cup of tea.
The novel tells the story of a couple of children during WWII, and the adults around them. One is a Nazi soldier, another a blind French girl. The characters engage the reader through their hopes and dreams and experiences, more than their dialogue or personality. They’re tour guides for the personality-filled characters around them. And that’s not a negative, but it’s also not a positive. The problem comes in with the Nazi boy. In an effort to make him sympathetic, he is drowned in tragic and iconoclastic situations: coal mining orphan, smaller than the other boys, picked on because he's almost albino, younger than the other boys, more sensitive than the other boys, a scientific genius, a natural leader of the other orphan children, never kills anybody, steps on a landmine at the end, and on, and on, and on. It’s heavy handed and the single place this book really annoyed. Instead of digging into the character, Doerr just piles more traits on. Instead of going in depth, he paints with a broader and broader brush. Instead of premising his book with, “Germans were people too in WWII,” Doerr trips over himself trying to allow this book to be widely palatable.
The theme revolves around dreams and reality. Both of the main characters are driven by their dreams, but reality keeps getting in the way through tragic means. This distinction never resolves into a clear statement, but the plot implies that reality wins, but dreams have value also. This is a popular sentiment that the book builds well.
So, a short set of notes for a book that lots of people will enjoy. When I finished it, I thought, “What beat this for the Pulitzer that year?” I looked it up: this did win the Pulitzer in 2015. And I think it’s a perfect fit for that prize: it’s tragic and heartwarming, widely readable, and doesn’t challenge too much. I’m happy I read it and have recommended it to friends.
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