The Content Reader

Ever since I read All the Lights We Cannot See    Anthony Doerr is a favourite author. Such captivating story. I have also read his  About Grace  which I liked very much. It was with much anticipation I opened his latest story. It is quite different from his other books and a much more ambitious story. Set in three different time frames and through the eyes of five young people, he tells a story of our common history through an ancient codex, and our attitude towards it.  "Bound together by a single ancient text, the unforgettable characters of Cloud Cuckoo Land are dreamers and outsiders figuring out the world around them: thirteen-year-old Anna and Omeir, an orphaned seamstress  and a cursed boy, on opposite sides of the formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, decades from now, who turns to the oldes stories to guide ...

I loved his book All The Light We Cannot See, and when my book club choose this for the next read, I decided on another book by the same author. This novel is not an easy read. It took me more or less 200 pages before I felt that the story ran off with me. Usually, I don't wait that long to continue a book, but Anthony Doerr is different. His stories do engage you and the prose is so beautiful, it is a pleasure to read it, for this feature alone. From the back cover: "Here Doerr tells, in luminous prose, the story of David Winkler, a man graced with the gift of premonition and plagued by a dream that foretells his daughter's death. He flees thousands of miles from his family and home in a desperate hope that his dream will not come true. Set in Alaska, Ohio, and the Caribbean, About Grace is a heartbreaking, radiant, and astonishingly accomplished novel about the tiny but lifesaving miracles happening around us at each moment, and about our longing for grace." I...

Author: Anthony Doerr HarperCollins UK, HarperPress/ 4th Estate/The Friday Project Loads have been written about World War II, from many different angles. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a lovely account from the view of two children; one French and one German. A mystery is woven into the story by the Sea of Flame , a mythical diamond. The story is set over a ten year period from 1934-1944, continuing with the end of the war and ending with events in 1974 and 2014. It is a wonderful story of how the world changes the lives of two children when war is knocking on the door. Werner Pfennig and his sister Jutta are growing up in an orphanage in Zollverein, a coal-mining complex outside Essen. Most people work for the mine and so did their father, who died in one of the many mining accidents.  The only prospect for Werner is to work there himself, which gives him nightmares. One day he finds a broken radio, takes it home and manage to repair it. As the years...