Customer Reviews

Evidence of Things Unseen: A Novel

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Marianne Wiggins' "Evidence Of Things Unseen (EOTU)" was an also-ran in the 2003 National Book Awards stake that should have snagged the prize. Shirley Hazzard's "The Great Fire" was a worthy winner but it's also more difficult and less accessible to the reading public.

EOTU is an uncommon masterpiece, a magically uplifting work of American fiction that outstrips anything I have read in recent years. Written in gloriously poetic, incandescent prose, EOTU is ambitious, even epic in scope, yet relentlessly intimate in execution. Wiggins somehow manages to locate the fulcrum that keeps the delicate balance throughout without losing either thread. The story of Fos and Opal is a tender love story on one level and a ode to the mystery of life on another.

Fos is obsessed with light, radiance, phosphorous material, anything that glows in the dark. Opal is the "gem" that drops into his life while on the way to catch the falling stars one night. But unlike the untutored Opal who exudes a quiet wisdom in dealing with life's surprises, Fos hangs his life on harnessing the natural world for the betterment of mankind, so when his faith in science turns around unexpectedly to backbite the hand that feeds it, his world crumbles and dissolves. But just when it seems like science has dealt the couple its most cruel blow, we are reminded that life has also gifted them with Lightfoot, a child that dropped into their lives, as it were, from nowhere. Just as it is capable of delivering Lightfoot to the childless couple, life is equally capable of letting an innocent child bite into a live cable and leave death and destruction in its wake.

When Lightfoot picks up the fallen threads of his life with Flash's help and he meets a girl called Ramona who paints using the invisible glow of fish hearts to illuminate her picture, we know that the cycle of life has once again begun and that it will go on forever.

"Evidence Of Things Unseen" is among the finest of contemporary American literature that deserves to be widely read. Go buy yourself a copy. Don't miss it.

There are many book I read, and truly enjoy, and happily give them a five star review. This is the kind of book that reminds you what five stars should truly represent. A heartbreaking and beautiful love story threaded through the creation of the atomic bomb, and America's call to arms, Wiggins has a bounty of just gorgeous prose at her fingertips that she depenses like cultured pearls. Watching the lives of Fos and Opal as they navigate through major events in American history including two wars, the Scopes trial, and creation of the TVA, is both tenderly fascinating and crushing. This is what fantastic writing is all about.

Wiggins does a masterful job of intertwining historical themes (American exceptionalism; ethical traps posed by 20th century scientific advances) with larger themes of love and death. But the book has tremendous heart, her characters are not historical constructs but as alive as people you know. Her prose is lyrical, but always inviting, never pretentious. Highly recommended.

Evidence of Things Unseen tells it story through people. It sounds simple, almost all stories seem to be told through people, but a lot of fiction tells the story mainly through plot, allegories, or nifty literary devices-and while those stories can make for excellent reading, they don't have the power this book does.

I really enjoyed the book and was reading newspaper reviews of it, one review lamented while they enjoyed the good writing, they were not quite sure what Wiggins was trying to tell them between the lines, noting two obvious lessons, the atomic bomb was bad and love is good. However, from my interpretation of the book to understand its lessons you did not need to read between the lines to get the lessons of the book-you need only pay careful attention to the characters and their interactions to understand the book.

This book is a love story-me, being a male-with incredibly slowness did not catch on to that fact until mid-way through the book, but once I caught I understood the philosophy of the book better. Love is not a simple notion-it consists of a lot of different verbs and nouns like lust, trust, familiarity, friendship, empathy, forgiveness, sacrifice and other words-this book tracks over 25 years of a relationship-the book is not about romance, but love and delves into the complexities of it, even its shortcoming (Opal the wife, though she loves her husband feels unfulfilled due to her inability to get pregnant.)

One of the things that interested me in analyzing this novel was figuring out which voice was most associated with the author's voice. In the end, I felt the author's voice was spread out between the characters, but the tone the novel takes as it nears the climax most reminds me of Flash's voice, a friend of the main character, Fos (All the characters of symbolic names-Fos, Phos means light in Greek, his first name Ray is probably from X-Ray, Flash, who lives a fast pace life, Opal, and Lightfoot are the main characters name). Flash is probably the book's smartest character, is cynical about human nature, loves beauty, a romantic who hates phoniness, and has a way with words. On the other hand, it does seem odd, that a female author would voice herself most in a womanizing playboy, who as a almost forty year old man has an affair with a 14 year girl, gets her pregnant, and leads her to her death by taking her to a back alley abortion place, where the abortion is botched and the girl bleeds to death, yet despite the illogical choice, the novels tone eventually most resembles Flash's cynical, but optmistic take on life.

Two other aspects I thought this book did well, were implicating the theme of science into the book and the historical backdrop for the book. The use of science and nature in the language was impressive. The language not only included scientific principles and scenes of nature, but also with equal impressiveness captured the enthusiasm the people who follow science have and that lay people do not understand. If you ever watch the popular NOVA series on PBS for example, you will see famous world class scientist put difficult concepts into the simplest form they can for the general public in the hope of not only getting across the principle itself, but also the excitement they feel in the search of a natural physical truth along with the hope that their equations and theories will one day benefit human race both practically and intellectually. Most people think of science as boring, analytical subject, but this book does a good job at getting across the enthusiasm scientist, professional or amateur feel for the subject-even if in the end the book takes the cynical approach, science is only what people make of it.

The historical backdrop is so impressive because it reconstructs the time. This means more than just creating the correct physical setting, for example the right cars, technology, language, places, and events. What makes this historical backdrop impressive is it captures peoples outlook on life, the isolated outlook of people in the country, the need for people to form group in the cities, peoples belief in science, the advent of a more materialistic society, and all the other philosophical debates of that day. It does all that without imposing a modern viewpoint on the characters of the story, which so many books that use historical backdrops unwittingly do.

Overall I found this book to be though provoking and entertaining, a combination for a great book.

This is a great story with rich language. My book group chose this book, and everyone enjoyed it. I rarely choose pages to mark, but marked two for the language. Others in our group earmarked many pages. Heed the warning about the back of the book. It gives away too much of the story. Pleasant reading.

I must have read a review of this book in a newspaper as I reserved it from the library. And I'm so glad I didn't miss that week's review.

There are so few books that are truly brilliant. And this is one. The writing is poetic. Ms. Wiggins' use of language is wonderful. And her storyline is unforgettable.

This is a remarkable book. One that I will now purchase to share with friends. My only regret is the ending. Whenever I find a book such as this I never want it to end. And when it does the ending is a let down. In this case not because the ending is unrealistic, or seemingly cut short. In this case, because I just wanted more and more and more.

And I would ask you not to read the cover, not to read to much about this book. It's better to let the author unfold word by word, page by page.

Surprised not to see more reviews on this National Book Award finalist. Writing is superb. Story captures your head and heart. Happened to Read the "Great Fire" by Shirley Hazzard (A National Book Award Winner) before this book and this book is a far superior work.

This story set in the years between from 1st to 2nd world wars traces the lives of two unique characters, Opal and Fos. Their quiet love will sink into your mind and heart and you will find them unforgettable. The events of the time at first swirl around them and then directly affect them. No account of the plot can possibly convey the depth and beauty of the writing. Don't miss this book and this writer!

While I found the references to light and white a little too hammered-in throughout this novel, taken as a whole (all character, little plot), it is a good read. The award-winning author, an English professor at USC and former wife of Salman Rushdie, projects her imagination onto these light-named folks better than in her novel The Shadow Catcher. References to Moby-Dick throughout reminded me that the "white" chapter of that novel was my favorite part of the entire story.

Wiggins portrays the Knoxville, TN area, the TVA, early photography, and the Tennessee River in poetic language, and she repeats that feat with the Monterey Bay area of CA. Moving along the decades, the author does a good job of tying up all the loose ends. As in her prior works, there are a bit too many coincidences, but that's the tactical way to tie up all the loose ends, after all. Clever and enlightened names: Opal, Pearl, Fos, Flash, Lightfoot, and all of them.

I especially liked this description of a Tennessee farmer: "He was a big man whose only understanding of the narrative of life, its shape and substance, was made up entirely of the world he worked with his big hands, not his mind---the world he saw, the one he walked upon and cursed at, sowed and harvested and thanked and ate for supper. He lived a diet and calendar of crop requirements; things beyond that, things he couldn't see and touch, may as well have been things from another planet. Beyond a farmer's natural cycle of fatality and hope, his struggle against soil and pestilence and unrepentant weather, there was no abstraction in [his]...life. Land ain't land less somethin comes of it..."

I agree with another reviewer that the first 3/4's of the book is slow at times, but the end made it worth it. If you like beautiful language, this books for you. That is what kept me going in the beginning. I was very satified in the end and sorry to leave the characters.