really, 3.5 stars.

Kricorian's writing is compelling, but the plot was predictable. Though I did appreciate tying the Armenian genocide to the horrors of WWII, I think more could have been done to show how cyclical history is. ( )

All the Light There Was; Kricorian, Nancy
This suffers because of its similarity in title and subject with Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See. This is also set in Paris during the Nazi Occupation and it also is about a young girl. End of similarities. This story is about an Armenian family, the parents are refugees from the Armenian Genocide. The book is much less complicated than the Doerr book. Its straightforward telling is like a grandparent might talk to young family members. "How I met your grandfather during the war." Its really a YA novel and as such it is a good introduction to how life goes on in difficult times. I received a finished copy from author through a Goodreads giveaway. ( )

Maral and her brother Missak are the children of orphans; their parents' families were killed in the Armenian genocide, and came to Paris to begin a new life together. The family of four lives in a small apartment in Belleville along with the mother's sister - the children's Auntie Shakeh - who also survived the genocide. When the Germans invade Paris, the whole family endures the wartime conditions of hunger and fear, and Missak and his friends Zaven and Barkev (brothers) begin working for the Resistance.

Maral herself does not participate in Resistance activities; she is a "good girl" who is at the top of her class at school, the "scholar" of the family. Her sphere is small, made up of the close-knit community of Armenians in Paris, who are both French and separate from the French; they are more empathetic toward the plight of the Jews because of their own recent genocide. Maral is disturbed when her Jewish neighbors and classmates are rounded up and sent away, and her family harbors their Jewish neighbor's child until Missak arranges for her to be transported to a relative in the Free Zone. But the reality of the war does not really set in for Maral until it strikes closer to home, when Zaven - to whom she is secretly engaged - and Barkev disappear.

The war dwarfs normal adolescent concerns, mostly, but Maral still must go about the business of growing up and making decisions both romantic and practical. Though she has close friends and is close to her parents, she operates independently, within the constraints of her community. She is more sensible than romantic, and always does the right thing; she's an easy character to root for, but she does not inspire with heroics. Which is not to say that All the Light There Was isn't a lovely, sad, accurate rendering of the Armenian community in Paris during and after WWII; it is, and I recommend it.

Quotes:
"Sweetheart," Karnig said, "now you've said no three times and we've said yes three times, so it's finished." (38)

As hours went by, the wall clock dosed out the minutes like medicine. (97)

She made me think of a bell with no clapper. (102)

"The world is made of dark and light, my girl, and in the darkest times you have to believe the sun will come again, even if you yourself don't live to see it." (103)

"What if they catch you? We won't know a thing. I'll be walking down the rue de Belleville and I'll see your name on a poster. 'Zaven Kacherian, shot by firing squad,' it will say. Each time they put up a new one, I read the list to make sure you're not there....Each night...I try to imagine where you are. Sometimes I feel as though we're connected by an invisible thread, and other times all I feel is that something dreadful has happened to you." (134-135)

"If an Armenian in France does something dishonorable, the French say he's a dirty immigrant. If he does something good, the French take the credit and say he's French." (142)

"Telling a mother not to worry is like telling her not to breathe." (145)

As I repeated the words of the liturgy, I understood that one of the sins of the living was to be still alive when the loved one was no longer walking the earth. (149)

...and I lay in the dark as the infernal machine of my imagination began to work... (160)

Sometimes missing Zavig would hit me like an illness for which there was no medicine. (180)

When I was a schoolgirl, I had believed that happiness was a question of finding one's true love, the way it happened in so many of the novels I read. But...I realized you could love more than one person at the same time, and that marriage was not just about love. It was also about duty. (210)

He said this one word in such a way that no others were possible. (239)

"I think my heart is breaking, but I'm not sure because I can't feel a thing." Only then did I start crying. (248)

"A wave of sorrow swept over me like nausea and I closed my eyes. (249)

"When I saw those pictures in the paper, I thought, If those boys come back, those memories come with them. Both heaven and hell are here in this world." (252)

"I wonder if it's something you get over, or if you just wear it like a scar." (273)

My father said, "When you've seen what I have, where a decision to go one way or another turned out to be a matter of life or death, you give people more room to do what is human." (276)

Told from the voice of a teenaged Armenia whose family lives in Paris during the Nazi occupation, this subtle novel is more about the emergence and maturing of love than actually World War II. Nicely written, the family intimacies and struggles are highlighted through the slow starvation of its members. The perils of resistance workers and the deportation of the French Jews play a minor role in how these events affect the author and her family. I enjoyed the novel but was a bit less moved and involved than I had hoped. ( )