In August 1944 the historic walled city of Saint-Malo, the brightest jewel of the Emerald Coast of Brittany, France, was almost totally destroyed by fire…. Of the 865 buildings within the walls, only 182 remained standing and all were damaged to some degree. —Philip Beck
It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio. —Joseph Goebbels Zero 7 August 1944
When we try to erase our history by banning books, by declaring that they are "woke" or just because your political party tells you to, there is something seriously wrong, in my opinion. For me, it didn't take this book or the thousands of others I've read, to know what early Americans did to the Indigenous people who occupied most of America from early times... It didn't take this book for me to know what happened during WWII and how people were being treated by the Nazi Regime... Nor does it take any of the recent books I've read about what has happened in America that has led to a divide so deeply created through political power and subterfuge... What a book does for me is to allow me to either reaffirm what I have seen or studied... Or, to read of different opinions that may help me better understand my neighbors...
As an aside, this book has a long playlist, so I'm inserting as I can...I was somewhat surprised that many of the songs that have remained popular actually were written prior to WWII! Actually, the playlist was longer; however, when I start to search for the songs that were being used, there was a warning...noting that these were German historical marches and had nothing to do with Nazis... I decided not to use them given that the book indeed talked about Hitler's call to war... If interested, they are available on YouTube under German's WWII videos.
If you enjoy historical novels, this book is a must-read. Perhaps you have already read it or know about the movie (several videos provided here for information...) Whether or not I later see the movie, I am thankful that I read the book first. There is so much in this book that needs to be considered--to remember. My guess is that the magic cannot possibly be demonstrated in a movie... And, it appears that the relationship between the two teens might be emphasized in the movie. Indeed, I was shocked, after reading the book description and videos, that their meeting did not take place until very late in the book! My anticipation had been stoked so much so that I kept waiting for that meeting!
I wasn't necessarily disappointed that the emphasis was on these two people, but I believe the hype was misleading. On the other hand, readers will be immediately caught up in what happened when the Germans (BTW I am of German descent on both sides of my parents.) It was important for me to read this particular book. I have read many about the Holocaust, and at least one set in Poland. Having this book set in France gave me new information that I may not have ever known. You see, my father worked in the mines and was killed before I was born. My mother was left a widow with four children...
It was in France, in the Walled citadel of Saint Malo, that this book was set. And, why was it taken over? Because there was a mine there and soon the residents of the town were being forced to work in that mine while being treated cruelly and with little food. Certainly the book brought me an awareness that if my family had not come to America, my father might have been in one of the mines in Europe that were being confiscated by Hitler in order to control the world that he planned to conquer!
Tuesday after Tuesday she fails. She leads her father on six-block detours that leave her angry and frustrated and farther from home than when they started. But in the winter of her eighth year, to Marie-Laure’s surprise, she begins to get it right. She runs her fingers over the model in their kitchen, counting miniature benches, trees, lampposts, doorways. Every day some new detail emerges—each storm drain, park bench, and hydrant in the model has its counterpart in the real world. Marie-Laure brings her father closer to home before making a mistake. Four blocks three blocks two. And one snowy Tuesday in March, when he walks her to yet another new spot, very close to the banks of the Seine, spins her around three
times, and says, “Take us home,” she realizes that, for the first time since they began this exercise, dread has not come trundling up from her gut. Instead she squats on her heels on the sidewalk. The faintly metallic smell of the falling snow surrounds her. Calm yourself. Listen. Cars splash along streets, and snowmelt drums through runnels; she can hear snowflakes tick and patter through the trees. She can smell the cedars in the Jardin des Plantes a quarter mile away. Here the Metro hurtles beneath the sidewalk: that’s the Quai Saint-Bernard. Here the sky opens up, and she hears the clacking of branches: that’s the narrow stripe of gardens behind the Gallery of Paleontology. This, she realizes, must be the corner of the quay and rue Cuvier. Six blocks, forty buildings, ten tiny trees in a square. This street intersects this street intersects this street. One centimeter at a time. Her father stirs the keys in his pockets. Ahead loom the tall, grand houses that flank the gardens, reflecting sound. She says, “We go left.” They start up the length of the rue Cuvier. A trio of airborne ducks threads toward them, flapping their wings in synchrony, making for the Seine, and as the birds rush overhead, she imagines she can feel the light settling over their wings, striking each individual feather. Left on rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Right on rue Daubenton. Three storm drains four storm drains five. Approaching on the left will be the open ironwork fence of the Jardin des Plantes, its thin spars like the bars of a great birdcage. Across from her now: the bakery, the butcher, the delicatessen. “Safe to cross, Papa?” “It is.” Right. Then straight. They walk up their street now, she is sure of it. One step behind her, her father tilts his head up and gives the sky a huge smile. Marie-Laure knows this even though her back is to him, even though he says nothing, even though she is blind—Papa’s thick hair is wet from the snow and standing in a dozen angles off his head, and his scarf is draped asymmetrically over his shoulders, and he’s beaming up at the falling snow. They are halfway up the rue des Patriarches. They are outside their building. Marie-Laure finds the trunk of the chestnut tree that grows past her fourth-floor window, its bark beneath her fingers. Old friend. In another half second her father’s hands are in her armpits, swinging her up, and Marie-Laure smiles, and he laughs a pure, contagious laugh, one she will try to remember all her life, father and daughter turning in circles on the sidewalk in front of their apartment house, laughing together while snow sifts through the branches above.
~~~
We meet Werner and his sister as they listen to the radio... Werner has found an old one that was not working and he had figured out how to fix it... Soon he was learning more and more, self-taught, as people heard of his ability to fix things that were electronic... As I am writing, I realize, for the first time, that the Frenchman that was broadcasting could be the very man that was related to Marie-Laure and to whose home they went when they were forced to leave their home... As I said, the book is long and so much can be discovered about that awful time period--war!
Werner and Jutta find the Frenchman’s broadcasts again and again. Always around bedtime, always midway through some increasingly familiar script. Today let’s consider the whirling machinery, children, that must engage inside your head for you to scratch your eyebrow… They hear a program about sea creatures, another about the North Pole. Jutta likes one on magnets. Werner’s favorite is one about light: eclipses and sundials, auroras and wavelengths. What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible. Werner likes to crouch in his dormer and imagine radio waves like mile-long harp strings, bending and vibrating over Zollverein, flying through forests, through cities, through walls. At midnight he and Jutta prowl the ionosphere, searching for that lavish, penetrating voice. When they find it, Werner feels as if he has been launched into a different existence, a secret place where great discoveries are possible, where an orphan from a coal town can solve some vital mystery hidden in the physical world. He and his sister mimic the Frenchman’s experiments; they make speedboats out of matchsticks and magnets out of sewing needles. “Why doesn’t he say where he is, Werner?” “Maybe because he doesn’t want us to know?” “He sounds rich. And lonely. I bet he does these broadcasts from a huge mansion, big as this whole colony, a house with a thousand rooms and a thousand servants.” Werner smiles. “Could be.” The voice, the piano again. Perhaps it’s Werner’s imagination, but each time he hears one of the programs, the quality seems to degrade a bit more, the sound growing fainter: as though the Frenchman broadcasts from a ship that is slowly traveling farther away. As the weeks pass, with Jutta asleep beside him, Werner looks out into the night sky, and restlessness surges through him. Life: it’s happening beyond the mills, beyond the gates. Out there people chase questions of great importance. He imagines himself as a tall white-coated engineer striding into a laboratory: cauldrons steam, machinery rumbles, complex charts paper the walls. He carries a lantern up a winding staircase to a starlit observatory and looks through the eyepiece of a great telescope, its mouth pointed into the black.
~~~
Fortunately for Warner, his expertise was soon recognized so that instead of, when he was older, going to the front lines somewhere, he was sent to a school and then on, using his skills with radios to move around in search of illegal (as defined by Hitler) transmissions that were being used by, for instance, those in the small town of Saint Malo...
The book moves back and forth between the lives of the teen girl and boy. The girl had become blind and lived with her father, but when they had to leave their home, they hoped to find peace with a relative. By the time they got there, it was already too late. The Germans had taken over Saint Malo. Soon after Marie-Laure and her father arrived, her father was called back and nobody knew whether he had been killed or was captured and held, possibly tortured.
A deadly subplot was the fact that Hitler had assigned one man to supervise the taking of all riches found in conquered areas so that they could create one big magnificent facility to display the booty of their conquests! And we follow this man in his travels as he carries out his orders, but, in doing so, became very ill and he became obsessed in finding one particular jewel that was said that anybody who owned it could not die. His search was intense and, finally, he had made his way to the location where Marie-Laure was staying... There we find the one scene in the entire book where Marie-Laure meets Werner... And she was not alone...
I was fascinated with the father's skillful attention to his daughter's new disability and his creating a small scale version of his entire town (and later) another where they had moved, to allow his daughter to become self-sufficient. And, he brought his daughter to his workplace, the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, where he was the lockmaster for the entire building. There is no reference that any part of the book was based upon actual facts, except of course the war itself.
When we allow ourselves to enter into the lives of those who are affected by war, hopefully we become more sympathetic and empathetic... If we are not permitted (by banning such books) to learn, we deny ourselves and our children the chance to learn about the lives of those outside of our personal environment and garner a certain level of respect for those who lived through these terrible hardships...
We learned, for instance, that the owner of the home in Saint Malo in which Marie-Laure now lived, was her great-uncle Etienne who now refuses to leave his home, based upon his having been near his brother when he was murdered during the war, probably WWI... Yet, as Marie-Laure changes the daily routine, little by little, he begins to improve and ultimately leaves his home for the first time. At that time, his housekeeper had become involved in small ways of fighting back, making the soldiers in their town aware that they were not welcomed there... When his housekeeper dies, and Marie-Laure was unable to go out for food, he took that first step... BTW, he was also the man who was running the radio sending out messages... fed to him from his housekeeper and her group of local women!
In many ways, the book is heartbreaking, yet, readers will find, as I did, that we become invested in the lives of those who are silently fighting against the Germans, while knowing that they would be executed if they were discovered... While the actions taken against the Jewish people were horrific, a different type of torture was used against those living in Saint Malo! No actions taken by oppressors can be accepted.
Given what is happening in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, now may be the perfect time for you to read this book. It awakens your heart and mind to what we all must fight to end and prevent!
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