Review by showhost
Marie Laure became blind at the age of 6. She lives with
her father in Paris, it is 1934. Marie Laure learns to get about with the help
of her father who builds a miniature model of where they live so she can feel
the buildings and the streets. She counts her steps when she goes out. She
loves books and he buys her Braille books for her birthday and builds her
another little miniature building.
Her father is a curator at the museum and specialises in
gem stones. There is one gemstone in particular which rumour says it has
powers, levity for the owner but bad luck for those around them. It is a fire
diamond.
Werner & his sister Jutta live 300 miles away in
Germany, they are raised in a kindly childrens house. They are amongst other
orphans whose fathers have been killed working the mines. Werner is 7 years
old, small for his age with white hair. Age 8 he finds a broken radio which has
been chucked out behind the shed. Werner fixes it and they listen to it in the
Home. One thing in particular they listen to is a French man who talks about
the most interesting of subjects, science and nature and plays classical music,
they sit enthralled.
When the threat of war looms in 1939 Marie & her
father leave Paris and travel to Saint Malo to stay with her eccentric uncle.
The museum have 3 replicas made of the fire diamond and each curator takes one
of the diamonds, none knowing which is the real one.
Werner knows that at 14 years old he will be expected to
go down the mines like his father and generations before. He cannot stand the
thought of spending days and nights confined underground. Chosen youths are
being gathered and sent to a cadet school to learn to live, fight & die for
the fuhrer and motherland and Werner is offered the chance to go because of his
special skills with radios and his academic brain. Jutta does not want him to
leave – can he not see what he will be expected to do?
When war comes the German army advance and Saint Malo
comes under attack. Marie is 16. Her father has been taken for questioning
about the diamond. Her uncle has hidden a radio receiver and is helping the
resistance.
Werner is working with a team tracking people who are
transmitting information, a trail which takes them from Russia to Austria and
France.
Sargeant major Reinhold von Rumpel is dying of cancer and
as the german army advance into france he looks for the diamond of fire and will
not give up looking until he finds all four copies.
The story moves back and forwards from 1945 to 1934 until
the two time zones meet. We go from Marie to Werner, living the build up of the
war and events through them. It isn’t gruesome or gory just a slowly unfolding
story of the people and how their lives touch and then are gone. It could have
finished a couple of chapters earlier it drag a little uneccessarily but as the story came to its final quarter it became tenser. A very
engaging book and a good read.
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