Plain Seeing [Paperback]

Sandra Scofield (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1998

After 15-year-old Lucy loses her mother, grief is compounded with sorrow that she never really knew her. Now, 25 years later, Lucy is recovering from a terrible injury and realizing that her family life is unravelling. Her only way out is to understand the mystery of her mother's life.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When 15-year-old Lucy, the protagonist of Sandra Scofield's Plain Seeing, loses her mother, grief compounds with sorrow at the realization that she never really knew her--and now never will. Lucy's few memories of her mother include the days spun out in regret, and the image of her 17-year-old mother stepping off the train and into her own mother's arms--devastated, young, and pregnant with Lucy.

Plain Seeing begins in 1938 in a farming community east of Lubbock, Texas, with a description of a family portrait. But there are, in fact, two photographs, and later, while comparing them, Lucy is compelled to tell her mother's story. It is through this re-creation of her mother's life that Lucy finally comes to know her.

Almost 25 years later, in "Lucy's Book," her own life has begun to unravel. She flees to Aunt Opal in Lubbock, where she spots another photograph in a Depression-era photography exhibit. The picture moves her to attempt to understand her mother as a younger woman, and the discoveries Lucy makes along the way free her to live a full life, without dwelling in the past. Scofield, whose literary achievements include the American Book Award, again demonstrates her knack for dramatizing the lives of ordinary people and the cauldron of family dynamics. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

The seemingly inexhaustible potential for mothers to ruin daughter's lives--even if it's by dying young--is probed in a novel that tries to be warm, wise, and moving, but without much success. Scofield (Opal on Dry Ground, 1994, etc.) assembles a strong cast of supporting characters to tell the story of a woman obsessed with her mother's early death. But the weakest figures here, unfortunately, are the two protagonists: mother Emma and daughter Lucy, whose self-destructive and self-absorbed lives evoke more impatience than sympathy--even when Emma has to abandon her dream career and the grown Lucy's family walks out on her. Now 45, Lucy, still unhappy and yearning to understand why her life seems so wretched, tells a story framed by two photographs: one taken of her mother in May 1938, full of promise, and another of herself as a baby in the 1940s. Emma, a blond beauty, dreams of leaving her home in New Mexico and going to Hollywood in search of stardom. Then she meets Hollis, a screenwriter on location in the desert, and accepts his invitation to come to California. But she loses her virginity in a barely credible manner and becomes pregnant, cutting short her burgeoning movie career that kindly Hollis has been nursing along. Back in New Mexico with mother Greta and sister Opal, she gives birth to Lucy, marries someone else, and dies in her early 30s without sharing her past with her daughter. Which of course explains why Lucy has been unhappy, unfaithful in her marriage to academic Gordon, and not a good mother to daughter Laurie. A traffic accident, in which Lucy is badly injured and after which Gordon and Laurie abandon her, leads to the predictable catharsis. Lucy rallies, and, after finally learning the truth about Mom--and Dad--feels ``able to live a real life'' at last. Shallow and schematic. Not Scofield's best. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Perennial (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060929456
• ISBN-13: 978-0060929459
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,487,477 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good read, November 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Plain Seeing (Paperback)

This book is well written and compelling. It's actually two stories about the lives of two women--a mother and a daughter--the first part ends when the daughter is born, the second begins several years after the mother has died, so we never see the mother and daughter on the "stage" together.

Scofield writes beautifully and tells a good story. Part one was a bit slow at times--in the beginning especially--and because it takes place in the first half of the 20th century, I felt at times it veered just a touch into cliche, ie, our idea of history, versus what it was really like back then. Part two is excellent and gripping. You really feel for this woman as she becomes an adult and mother herself, who is utterly haunted by the loss of her own mother, and because of this not much of a mother to her own daughter and a pretty awful wife to her seemingly decent husband. Scofield seems more comfortable writing about this character because she lives in Scofield's own times. I recommend this book!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like a good photograph....it stays with you..., July 14, 1999

By 

Terry Mathews (a small town in east Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plain Seeing (Paperback)

I read a lot of books....I usually start one with great expectations and turn the final page with the resignation of good time, ill-spent.

"Plain Seeing," however, is quite different. I truly savored each page and was sorry when the story was over.

I'll read more Scofield. She's my kind of writer....she tells a compelling story, fills it with an odd-ball mix of characters, and lets the chips fall where they may. In other words, she puts real life into her work.

Read this book!

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it in Denver., December 22, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Plain Seeing: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Kirkus Review doesn't begin to do this book justice. Scofield writes from a place knowing and wise and in a voice haunting and beautiful. Reading Plain Seeing is little bit like sitting down over a letter from an old friend -- and hoping for a happy ending. Truly a book to be savored.