And There Was Light

Author: Jaques Lusseyran

Pages: 282

Rating: PG (there is no language and he doesn't even ever get super descriptive about violence either. However, this is definitely an adult book because the writing is too...dense? for a younger audience. It's very deep and intense)

Summary:
When Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters. He was one of only thirty from the transport to survive. His gripping story is one of the most powerful and insightful descriptions of living and thriving with blindness, or indeed any challenge, ever published.

My Thoughts: I found this book...a little tough to get through. There is very little dialogue, and some of the philosophical ideas the author expounds upon went a bit over my head. The story was very interesting, that's for sure, but I felt like he spent way too much time on his childhood and very few pages on his work with the Resistance and subsequent imprisonment. I did enjoy the many reflections on how although he could not see with his eyes, he could still see in many other ways, and most of the time he did not consider himself handicapped at all. I think his general attitude about life is incredibly admirable and worth emulating. He also was one who survived the concentration camps by focusing on helping others instead of on his own difficulties. He fully believed in God the entire time, and realized the importance of just letting each moment of life be what it is and just accepting it.

I think in order to get the full effect of this book you have to pause a lot to reflect on what has just been said. It's not a book you can just read through quickly (like I did). It was definitely a different perspective than I have read before though and was very good!