I watched the HBO mini-series of Big Little Lies recently and was completely blown away by it. I was also a little curious after watching, particularly about where the book different from the TV show and what extra characterisation might be found in it. Rather than try and find the time to read it, I bought the audiobook, narrated by Caroline Lee. Perhaps because I listened to the book for a specific purpose rather than to listen to a story, I found that listening enhanced my enjoyment of the TV show retrospectively (and made me want to watch it again) and conversely, I found that the TV enhanced my enjoyment of the audiobook because I could see the scenes playing out in my mind as I’d seen them on TV.
I had a number of thoughts about what was different and what worked better. To discuss them however, it is necessary to give away spoilers. This is your official spoiler warning. Proceed beyond here at your own risk!
There were quite a few differences between the book and the TV show – that’s to be expected of course, but what interested me in particular were three of them, which all revolved in one way or another around ambiguity:
The portrayal of Madeline
What happened to Jane six years earlier
The specifics of the particular parent’s death and the aftermath. (Told you there would be spoilers.)
Madeline
In the book, Madeline and Ed are pretty happy actually. There’s none of the “are you still in love with Nathan” that the TV show had. She didn’t have an affair and she doesn’t think Nathan is the love of her life. What struck me the most about her in the book (something I appreciated – I’m curious to view the TV show again through that lens actually) is that there is better context about what Nathan did. Because he left her with a three week old baby and just walked out. He bailed at an extremely difficult time and completely flaked on her. He didn’t bob back up into Abigail’s life until she was 11. He didn’t pay child support at all in the intervening years. He was, basically, a shitbucket. And that wasn’t obvious to me in the TV show. There were hints of it and I think those who had read the book beforehand would see it but for me, someone who did not know the story going in, the portrayal leaned to, not just jealousy that Abigail seemed to be choosing her dad over her mother but also that Nathan was her lost love and Ed couldn’t compete. And of that latter, there was none in the book. I suppose the TV Madeline was a little more interesting because she had an affair (she was more obviously flawed and flawed characters I often more interesting) and the romantic tension between Ed and Madeline possibly also made for better viewing but I liked Madeline better in the book and I think, when I watch the TV show again, I’ll like her even more than I did the first time with this extra knowledge in my brain. The affair in the book was between the French nanny and Renata’s husband (and also Harper’s husband actually – that French nanny was a busy girl). Harper’s role in the TV show was much cut down and I could see why that was done. She was able to show how much of a suck up she was in fairly short scenes and somethings just have to be cut in adaptations.
I do think the TV should could have done more to make it clear to viewers just what Nathan had one. Really, one short conversation would have done the trick. I’m not a fan of adultery so if I had my druthers I’d prefer that Madeline hadn’t cheated but, that said, in the book, while Madeline is kind of the glue that holds them all together, she is perhaps less interesting than the other two main characters and I can see that adding in that evened the balance a little better between the three women.
Ultimately the changes made to Madeline’s made her a somewhat ambiguous character; it was not as clear cut that she was “good” – more like real life I suppose. However the other major changes I want to talk about go the other way – they make the TV show less ambiguous than the book.
What happened to Jane
I use that neutral term for a reason. In the HBO series it is not at all ambiguous. Jane was raped by Perry (as it turns out). There was no shade of grey there. Sure she went up to his room willingly but what happened after was clearly and obviously entirely non-consensual. What happened in the book however was less clear. What struck me is that when Jane is telling her story (and I didn’t get the impression from the text that she was lying to herself or confused about what happened) she was very clear that the actual sex she had was consensual. Perry choked her and she said no and he tried to persuade her and she said no again and then he stopped. But she didn’t say no to sex. She didn’t try to get away. I’m not being critical of Jane when I say that. If she had’ve in her head been screaming no no no, that would absolutely have been enough. But that’s not what she says happened. She says the sex was consensual. And, even though Perry was an utter shitbag he did stop choking her after she asked him (albeit more than once) to stop. While they were having sex he pelted her with a barrage of insults, telling her how fat and ugly she was and how bad her breath smelled and many other horrible things and Jane clearly remembers being mortified and horrified. She also clearly wasn’t enjoying the sex. And her memory of the experience is in no way positive. It is here that the gray area happens. I don’t know the answer and as I’m not a sexual assault survivor I’d be hesitant to even take a guess. It seems to me there is some level of assault which happened – certainly physical (with the choking) and then verbal. What makes me hesitate in relation to the sexual is Jane’s own recitation of it. If she says the sex was consensual, who am I to tell her otherwise?
Perhaps I am wrong that she didn’t appear to be lying to herself or confused. Perhaps that is on me or perhaps it was in part due to the narrator’s interpretation of character. I did, after all, experience the book through the lens of a narrator’s performance. And I freely admit I’m not great at subtle. But at the time I was trying to find confusion or self-deceit within the text and I struggled to do so. In the book it was presented as ambiguous. In the TV show, it was not. Frankly, I applaud the decision of the producers there. I think it would have been difficult to portray the events as described in the book without taking a lot more time to do so and that would have changed the story. Big Little Lies wasn’t an exploration of rape culture and it didn’t really delve into “when is it rape and when is it not?” I don’t think the book was doing that and I don’t think the TV show wanted to. For me to be truly satisfied with the ambiguity of the book, I’d have needed it to pose that question at the beginning and then spend the book making the case for the answer – but that wasn’t Big Little Lies.
Certainly what happened to Jane was awful on any view and I don’t think “she deserved it” or “she asked for it” or anything like that (and I don’t think the book suggested this to be the case either, nor the TV show) but the book left it open to interpretation I guess and the TV show shut that down. In general terms I’m not a fan of ambiguity. I prefer more certainty – in my books and other media and in my real life too.
Perry’s Death
This was another big departure between the TV show and book. In the book, Bonnie pushes Perry off a bar stool on a wet balcony and the stool slips and he loses his balance and falls over the railing to his death. The push was deliberate, although Bonnie did not intend to kill him. In the book, Ed and Nathan also witness this event. And in the book, Bonnie confesses to the police and the matter goes to trial and she ends up with a suspended sentence and community service. It’s not ambiguous* in that what happens is very clear but Bonnie’s actions aren’t noble. They’re not to protect Celeste or anyone else. Bonnie is angry because she has a history with domestic violence and Perry has just been exposed as a serial abuser. For me, the “ambiguity: in this part of the book is about motive: Why did Bonnie push Perry – it wasn’t really about Celeste, was it? In the TV show however this section different and Bonnie’s motive was obvious and clear and… pure.
In the TV show, which I found to be more powerful in every regard, particularly around Perry’s death, only the women are on the landing (highlighting the feminine power inherent in the entire story). Perry is actively kicking and striking Celeste when Bonnie comes racing up to him and pushes him. This part of the show is done in strobing flashes. It’s very effective but it’s not like there is an entire scene which shows everything in a straight line. The effect used deftly shows the chaos and tension and confusion Bonnie was striding into. It shows the split second decision she made and it paints Bonnie as the avenging angel. I didn’t see it as Bonnie deliberately pushing Perry down the stairs – to my eyes, she was pushing him off Celeste and away from her and he fell because there happened to be stairs just beyond where Celeste was curled on the ground trying to protect herself. Her motive was protection. Not anger and not even violence.
The women (because this show is all about girl power and isn’t that grand?) banded together and said Perry fell. And it created a bond between them, unbreakable and resolute that was so eloquently pictured in that scene on the beach with all the children playing together and the women all in accord, having put behind them the misunderstandings and jealousies of the past. It created both a dramatic crescendo to the show but also what felt to me to be a very fitting finale.
One thing that I think the TV show missed when adapting the book though (and it’s small but I noticed it) is that both in the book and screen adaptation, there’s a part where the investigating officer gives a press conference and says something along the lines of they’re treating the death as a homicide and they’re sure they’ve spoken to the person responsible already. Except that didn’t fit with the way the death was portrayed in the show. Everyone there said it was an accident. All the women present, said Perry fell. So how were the police able to say so confidently that Perry was murdered? In the book it made more sense (although even then, not perfect sense) but given how it was portrayed in the TV show, it felt like a jarring note in an otherwise beautiful symphony of TV storytelling.
I liked the TV show ending much better. The book’s ending kind of dribbled off and it felt anticlimactic. The TV show painted Perry as a greater monster than the book (for a number of reasons and in a number of ways) and his death looked and felt like justice.
The ending also may have done something else. If my suspicion is correct – that Celeste and the other women did not disclose to the police that Perry had been beating her just prior to the fall, it protected Celeste and perhaps more importantly, the children. In this version, Josh and Max (and I guess Ziggy too if Jane wished it) didn’t need to know Perry was an abuser – or at least, they didn’t need to find out when they were so young and so close on the heels of losing their dad. That information wasn’t going to come out in a trial and Celeste could choose when and with whom to share it. She had the choice to tell Josh and Max later (or never) but the boys would not be subjected to harassment from others because of who their father was. I’ll have to watch the show again to see if I’m right on that. Perhaps I misread the scene but it seemed to me that if they had told the actual truth then Bonnie wouldn’t have even been charged because she was clearly acting in defense of Celeste. So that leads me to the conclusion that the women covered up everything about it – not only in order to protect Bonnie (who arguably didn’t need any such protection) but also – even mainly – to protect Celeste and the boys.
Big Little Lies is so clever and layered. When I do a re-watch and with the benefit of having now listened to the book, I’m sure I’ll find even more things to get me thinking. Brava. Just give them all the Emmys now.
