The light that you can't see, by the American writer Anthony Doerr, It was published 10 years ago and in 2015 it won the Pulitzer Prize. Its great success among critics and readers has led to its adaptation to television in a miniseries which premiered last November on the Netflix platform. This is my review.
Anthony Doer
Born in Cleveland in 1973, he studied Fine Arts at university and specialized in Creative writing. She decided to dedicate herself to literature when she was given a Guggenheim fellowship dedicated to creation.
He got the international recognition with The light that you can't see with which he got the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and also the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It has been translated and published in several languages. His latest novel is Cloud city.
The light that you can't see — synopsis
It is a parallel narrative from the stories of two children —Marie-Laure, French and blind, and Werner, a German orphan— in the years before, during and after the occupation of France.
Marie-Laure lives with his father in Paris, near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as a locksmith. Very young, she goes blind and he builds her a perfect miniature of her neighborhood so that she can memorize it thanks to her touch and thus move around her spaces. Then the Nazis occupy Paris and they both have to flee to Saint Malo. With them they take what could be the most precious and dangerous jewel of the museum.
On the other hand we have Werner, an orphan who lives in a mining town in Germany with his little sister Jutta and becomes captivated by a radio That find. So it will become expert in building and repairing these crucial devices at the time, a skill that will attract the attention of Hitler Youth.
The light that you can't see - Review
Written in the present tense to bring you even closer to the action and the characters, their short chapters of no more than three or four pages that alternate between the little Marie-Laure and the orphan Werner They move rapidly through their lives, which end up intersecting when both are already teenagers, in the last hours of the German siege of the town of Saint-Malo. But first you witness the progressive and radical change that the war produces in their lives.
In the middle, and as a connecting thread between them that, in the end, is revealed to be almost magical, is the radio, one of the most fundamental and determining elements for the development of the contest. The Werner skill to repair devices will attract the attention of the controls of the Hitler Youth, who end up recruiting him. And Marie-Laure will discover that her family in Saint-Malo are more than fond of not only listening to her, but also transmitting, which they will end up doing for the Resistance.
Furthermore, we have the story of a fabulous stone with a curse that is kept in the Museum of Natural Sciences in Paris and is looking for a Nazi officer. But that search is the least of it. The important thing is how everyone's stories come together until they come together in the exciting and emotional ending.
Structure and characters
They mainly stand out the structure of the action and the description of the main characters: Very brave Marie-Laure in a world of darkness and Werner in another of incomprehension of what is happening around him.
And secondary ones are just as good, like Marie-Laure's loving father, who builds miniatures of his neighborhood for her so she can learn to navigate and loves her dearly; her great-uncle, scarred by the previous war and who is not able to leave the house, or the elderly housekeeper who takes care of him and will do the same with Marie-Laure. As soon as Werner is his sister, or friends at school, like Frederick, the weak and at the same time brave companion, passionate about birds and metaphor for the dozens of German children and young people who could not overcome the indoctrination brutal to which they were subjected. EITHER Frank, the Giant, a perfect example of those who did achieve it at the cost of later paying the high price of loneliness.
El epilogue continues to the present day without no moral or lesson, but simply to show how you can not only survive nothingness and horror, but do it as well as possible.
The light that you can't see — miniseries on Netflix
The adaptation consists of 4 episodes that premiered last November and continues in the platform's catalog. Among other recognitions, he was nominated for the Golden Globes for best miniseries or TV movie.
The cast includes the debutante Aria Mia Loberti and the German actor Louis Hoffmann, seen in another Netflix series titled Dark. And in the secondary characters there are renowned performers such as Hugh Laurie (Marie-Laure's great-uncle) and Mark Ruffalo (his father).