Relenting to my parents’ continual recommendations, I finally read Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning All the Light We Cannot See on a plane, then during the connection, on the next plane, and in the taxi until I’d absorbed the very last words sitting in my hotel room.
Needless to say, I found something compelling when reading All the Light We Cannot See, but I do not want to watch it. I have no specific qualms with the 2023 miniseries released on Nov. 2 by Netflix. In fact, I have just shared with you the extent of my knowledge on this book’s screen adaptation. My obstinance lies in the belief that, just as there are things film can do that literature cannot, All the Light We Cannot See’s written words cannot be adequately captured on screen.
It is true, a synopsis likely works well for both book and miniseries. Set during World War II, All the Light We Cannot See follows Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French girl who joins the French Resistance, and Werner Pfennig, a German boy recruited by the Nazis for his skill with radios.
Doerr alternates between their stories, following each of the before and afters that surround their unlikely intersection in the aftermath of the bombing of Saint Malo by Allied forces in 1944.
In the book, Doerr’s chapters are deceptively short, making you say “just one more, just one” — but it won’t be just one. However, beyond this, beyond the storyline, and beyond even the shapes of these characters, what kept me reading was the way Doerr focused in on these things, guiding the reader through them, in writing.
Josh Cook, writing for the Star Tribune, said “Like the title, Doerr’s prose is an unseen force that, over and over, will nudge you to the edge of your chair and leave you breathless.”
When the novel introduces us to Marie-Laure for the first time, Doerr begins by describing her miniature model of the city she is in, Saint-Malo, that her fingers have often traced. We feel the cathedrals “perforated” spire, the mansions “studded” with chimneys, “a delicate, reticulated” atrium, and “minute benches, the smallest no larger than apple seeds.” We are not seeing these sights. We are running our hands over them.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Doerr discussed his thoughts in his creations of a class contrasting the formulaic and unfamiliar in creative work. “Sometimes for me, the great joy of reading is when you realize the patterns of language are being changed a little bit and are played with, versus familiar expected language. It’s all about how much effort do you want to put into perception? I think that’s true of life itself. I want to make sure I’m paying attention when I’m in the world. I think that’s true in writing and reading, for sure.”
Marie-Laure can hear the bombers approaching Saint-Malo, “A mounting static. The hum inside a seashell.” However, this is as indicative as what she cannot hear: “no engines, no voices, no clatter. No sirens. No footfalls on the cobbles. Not even gulls.”
In a film, you would likely be able to see Marie-Laure in this moment. Even as viewers hear the bombers, the focus would be on her, the story everyone has come to watch. Perhaps this is no horrendous error in focus, but watchers are also not experiencing what is not there as we can in Doerr’s writing. There is a lack of familiarity without knowing that so often there would be gulls, that “even” these gulls have fallen silent to the approaching static, humming bombers.
Marie-Laure then finds a paper which she cannot see, but “She holds it to her nose. It smells of fresh ink. Gasoline, maybe.” Needless to say, scent is something television is generally weak at conveying.
All this may be so what? Most (good) books engage with these sensory details. While television loses some senses, it no doubt makes up for it, rearranges things, in ways that are not necessarily bad.
However, these are just a few examples of Doerr’s precise guiding of our perception to these minute sensory details in one chapter alone. This is a book that slows the experiences of the characters into specific insights into how they perceive their surroundings, their situations. If it were not so beautifully written, it would be boring.
Without wanting to spoil too many details, both of the two characters Doerr primarily follows are trapped for extended periods of time. This would no doubt translate to screen as a character sitting miserable, terrified (presuming decent acting) in the dark for, at the very least, several minutes. While these are obviously things that would have to be adjusted in a script, with good reason, television is unable to account for the beauty Doerr draws out in the stillness of these moments. A stillness Doerr defamiliarizes us with guides our attention to little sensory details that lead to interiority a camera can’t help but miss.
