All the Light We Cannot See: I've Had Just About Enough

Well.

I really never intended for my thoughts on All the Light We Cannot See to become a continuing series.  But the more I read of the book, and the harder it gets to keep pushing through it, the more I wish I had never started it at all.  Let's just say that the wait was, in this case, not worth it.

I am on page 383 now, with something like another 147 pages to go.  And there you have both the good news and the bad (too much reading time invested to quit on it now). The author continues to present his plot in snippets, during which I have often spoken aloud the words "just get on with it, please."  But, no, that's not the way this one works, and that makes me wonder about the editing process that "All the Light" went through before publication. I do realize that Mr. Doerr worked on the manuscript for ten years, but reading the book should not feel like a decade's work...what year is it now, anyway?

As the author flashes back from the present (August 1944) to events four years earlier, and then back to the childhoods of both characters in 1934 and later, I am getting a feeling of "overkill."  This feeling probably explains why I still don't much care about the book's two main characters, a German boy and a French girl, despite the fact that, different as they are, they seem to be headed to a very unpleasant meeting in the very near future.

At the moment, both are in grave danger of dying before that meeting ever takes place (if it does).  And, except as an intellectual exercise, I really don't care if either of them lives another five pages.  I hate it when I feel as if I'm wasting my time on a book...if Doerr is going to save this one for me he's down to less than 150 pages to get the job done.