Sights Unseen [Hardcover]

Kaye Gibbons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 1995

A young girl in a small town named Bend of the River Road struggles to understand her mentally disturbed mother and preserve their relationship. By the author of Charms for the Easy Life. 80,000 first printing. $70,000 ad/promo. BOMC & QPB selection.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Both forgiving and healing are true arts," says Hattie Barnes, the narrator of Gibbons's moving novel; readers will be thoroughly in thrall to her clear, true voice and to the poignant story she tells. In flashback, Hattie describes the summer and fall of 1967, when she was 12 and living in Bend of the River, N.C., and when her beautiful, psychotically volatile mother, Maggie, was temporarily committed to the psychiatric ward at Duke University. A near-miracle occurs: for the first time in nearly two decades, Maggie becomes stabilized on medication. And, for the first time in her life, Hattie experiences a mother who relates to, touches and cares for her. Gibbons tells this story of family dislocation and crisis in restrained prose of unflinching clarity, with a honing eye for the small domestic details that conjure a time, place and emotional atmosphere. She conveys the hellish condition of a home where one parent is delusional and dangerous to herself and others; where the other is a full-time caretaker; and where the children, Hattie and her older brother Freddie, are lonely, anxious, bewildered victims. The fifth member of the family is the grandfather, Mr. Barnes, a manipulative bully who protects and spoils his daughter-in-law, and indulges her every manic whim from his ample wallet; he is the truly destructive element in the Barnes family's lives. The dynamics of this dysfunctional group, their balance precariously maintained by the calm ministrations of their black housekeeper, Pearl, are spelled out with tender understanding. Gibbons is equally sensitive when conveying the aberrant wiring of Maggie's jangled brain. This is her best novel since Ellen Foster, a haunting story that begs to be read in one sitting. BOMC and QPBC featured alternates.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA?A story that chronicles the devastating effects of growing up in a dysfunctional family. Hattie's mother, a manic depressive, experiences erratic mood swings and irrational outbursts. She is incapable of nurturing her daughter, shopping, talking, or providing a role model for something as basic as cooking. Narrated by Hattie, the book is permeated with sadness and disillusionment because of her constant disappointment over the lost opportunities for bonding, her fears and embarrassment with peers, and her lack of mothering. The minor characters emerge as shadowy figures who must tiptoe around the mother's moods. Readers witness violent verbal attacks on Hattie's father and experience her brother's protective response of staying in his room. The entire family is grateful for the respite provided by the mother's institutionalization. The novel will elicit empathy in most YAs, providing information to those who have never experienced this type of family situation and reassurance to those who have.?Barbette Timperlake, R.E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 209 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; 1ST edition (August 30, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399139869
• ISBN-13: 978-0399139864
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,465,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book, January 26, 2001

By 

"sarah4181" (Mississippi) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sights Unseen (Mass Market Paperback)

I am just sorry that more people didn't enjoy the book as much as I did. Actually, I should not say enjoy...the book hit too close to home to be so enjoyable, as I, too, am a manic depressive. I am 19 years old and even though I have no children of my own, I do know, when my mind allows me to think clearly, the pain and hardship my condition causes my family. I think Gibbons portrayed a person with such an illness in a true and poignant way, as she herself suffers from the condition. It is not an easy life to live and she illustrates that in the book. Some thought the woman's episodes hilarious,however, to live the life is to know, and it's not funny at all. It is a matter of getting up every day and not knowing how you will feel or what you will do. It is a matter of hurting those you love unintentionally on a daily basis, hurting yourself on a daily basis, and never knowing where your life is going. Gibbons's plot may not have seemed as "page-turning" as some would have liked, but the illness, though unpredictable, is not the stuff for an action-adventure novel, except to those who live with it. The book is wonderful, and true to life, and worth every penny.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Who is Hattie Barnes??, March 10, 2005

By 

Cassie W. (Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sights Unseen (Mass Market Paperback)

SIGHTS UNSEEN, a short novel by Kaye Gibbons, tells the story of a woman named Maggie Barnes with bipolar disorder, told through her daughter, Hattie's, eyes. Hattie, writing from the perspective of the woman she's become, relates the events that happened to her mother, specifically those events that took place during Hattie's twelfth year, in 1963, when Maggie, between bouts of sex-crazed mania and suicidal depression, ran into a woman with a car and was sent to Duke for electroconvulsive shock therapy that was meant "cure" her.

The strength of the novel is in Kaye Gibbons' sensitivity to the severity of manic depression and what it's like for someone who has to live with bouts of extreme joy and severe sadness. However, if you're looking for some kind of insight from Hattie in this novel, you won't find it. Hattie is a completely impersonal narrator; it's easy to forget that she is Maggie's daughter. She seems so disconnected from the story and the events that are happening. The reader gets no insight into Hattie's hopes or fears--we don't know how she feels about growing up without a reliable mother; it's almost as if Gibbons deliberately skirts Hattie's feelings in order to talk more about her mother's antics. There is a brief suggestion that Hattie desperately desires her mother's attention, but it is not fully developed, and is therefore unbelievable.

The novel has potential--but, because of Hattie's failure as a narrator, it falls short of the goal Gibbons probably imagined it would attain.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars longing, January 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Sights Unseen (Mass Market Paperback)

As a woman who is fiercely close with my mother, my heart broke repeatedly for Hattie. She wanted the most basic thing every child craves: Love, and she spends her whole young life trying to understand her mother's illness and in the process she comes to understand herself and later her own children. Hattie is wise beyond her years at times, other times she is like a baby you just want to pick up and carry away from the situation.

Hattie is funny and tragic and careful and complex all at once. She longs for what many of us take for granted--a mother to laugh with, shop with, talk about boys with. This was the first book I read in a long time that actually made me cry.

Kaye Gibbons is a master of telling stories that are so real you think you are the main character. EVERY word she writes is necessary to the story. I have read every one of her books and I think she is excellent. It's easy reading too. I read Sights Unseen in a day.

After reading Sights Unseen I appreciate my mother and the life she gave up for me that much more. In fact, after I read it I wrapped it up and gave it her with a note of thanks on the inside front cover.