Lovely short video in which Anthony Doerr talks about his Pulitzer-prize-winning novel. He's right, it's almost impossible to imagine now a time when you couldn't just pull your mobile out of your pocket and call somebody. And whether a good or bad thing, we forget how much more isolated people used to be, and the importance of radio. All the Light beautifully explores this idea of connection.
I shouldn't think there are many London book bloggers who know Boise, Idaho, Doerr's hometown, but I am one of them as I once lived in the nearby town of Emmett for a year. Which doesn't really afford me any particular insight except that I think it's a testament to Doerr's research, imagination and writing ability that he was able to so brilliantly evoke Marie-Laure's world; one so very different to his own.
Detailed write-up and scores over on the main site; in general we liked this very much although the Pulitzer prize seemed to confer on it a weight we weren't totally sure it merited. Hard to tell, though, how this will linger on with us. How do we define a classic?