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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful book,
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??,
By
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,
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.
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