Saint-Malo.
A place on the shores of Brittany, France,.. a place where WWII lasted a little bit longer.
Where a young blind girl is stuck in her uncle's house with a priceless treasure, haunted by a German officer.
Where a young German boy is trying to find a way out of the bombed shelter he is stuck in, without realizing that he's stuck forever.
This novel is the story of how these two youngsters came to be in such predicaments.
It's a story about how even small things can have great consequences. How silence can be as treacherous as courageous.
The novel itself is contained of whole lot of little chapters, most of them not more than four pages, and we switch back and forth between the French girl and the German boy. Their stories touch almost imperceptibly, but when it does it sets of a hopeful spark.
I liked this story, but I admit that the quick bursts of chapters and its alternating nature made it difficult to get engrossed in this novel. It's high strung prose is distracting in the beginning, when you still have to get used to his manner of writing. It was a well written story, but emotionally it didn't equal The Book Thief , a novel to which it is mainly compared.
