Many months ago I found myself captivated by the idea of bioluminescence and spent many days researching it until every Wikipedia link had turned purple and I concluded my findings in a short article. After this short-lived love affair with light I returned to my non-luminescent world and this interest gradually became diluted by other discoveries and ideas I encountered in the following weeks. This was all to change after an animated afternoon discussion with a friend that led to me brushing the dust off my old notes about the deep ocean. At the reveal of my hidden interest, her eyes lit up as if they, too, were bioluminescent, and she insisted that I must at once read Widder's 'Below the Edge of Darkness'.
Never once have I read a non-fiction book disguised beautifully as a work of fiction. Widder is as much the protagonist of her piece as she is the writer. Typically as a reader of factual texts, I am left to feel as though I am sat hidden at the back of a standard, uninspiring lecture given by a professor with textbook-accurate fact recall. Widder instead seemed to reach a hand through the page and talk to me - as an older relative would an eager child - with the kind of wisdom only a life could give, not a textbook or a website. Just as it is perceived a sin to try to cleave art from artist, it is surprisingly hard to separate science from scientist. By the end of the book, I felt as though I knew Widder personally, and could see her human experiences shining through her discoveries.
A particularly touching scene I found was the story of her close encounter with blindness. For a book clearly about light and the visible world, to open by plunging the reader into a shared period of both physical and emotional darkness was immensely impactful in developing an appreciation for the light we are so privileged to experience surrounding us. By prompting me to see even the everyday colour as beautiful and vibrant, she could then go on to truly dazzle with her descriptions of the unusual and breathtaking underwater scenes. And it was these depictions that were nothing like I had read before, even in fantasy novels. Widder takes us on a journey, bundling the readers into her claustrophobia-inducing submersibles and descending into the pelagic abyss. She skilfully manipulates our emotions to the point that - from the comfort of my bedroom - I felt my panic rise with hers as the precarity of these expeditions was unveiled and began to pray with her for a glimpse of the magical underwater world. At many points my heart momentarily halted as the world fell into an inky shadow. Then all of a sudden, the lights would flicker on and this array of colours would glow through the black and white pages like stars illuminating the night sky. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at the ocean in the same way again.
In terms of the science scaffolding these paintings, Widder has the perfect approach. Dealing with a subject you have decades of expertise in when communicating with the general public is rather like resurfacing after a deep-sea dive. You have to come up for air eventually and give an accurate and detailed narrative that represents your topic in an informative manner. But move too rapidly and abruptly and you risk decompression sickness. Not once did I find myself at a loss for detail while reading this. And not once did I find myself lost within the detail. It is clear that she not only has the wide knowledge about every facet of this topic, but also the intellect to express it in the best possible manner for her audience. And believe me, the audience was engaged. In fact, I had to check in the mirror after reading the final page that I hadn't begun to glow myself from the excitement for bioluminescence that Widder managed to rekindle within me!
