Sights Unseen

Great book. Kaye Gibbons is such a good story teller. She can take what could be a difficult topic and makes it very readable and warm, and you don't feel like you've been given a guilt trip or been hit over the head with an agenda, like with some other authors. I've enjoyed all of her books.

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.

I come from dysfunctional Southern family plagued by alcholism, mental illness and the inability to express affection to children. Many of us were raised by house-maid surrogate mothers. The characters in this book were very real to me. I've had the experience of trying to catapult vomit from the second story of a vacation home so as not to upset my grandfather. I read it in one sitting. Ellen Foster and a Virtuous Woman did not move me in this way.

In the past few years Southern Fiction has exploded into the mainstream. Recognition for Southern writers has risen to new heights and readers, especially Southern readers, are the beneficiaries of some of the best fiction anywhere. Contemporary Southern Fiction has a unique and timeless perspective. One of the most promising new Southern writers is Kaye Gibbons. Ms Gibbons is a shining light and her novels are exceptional. Like the characters she so carefully and precisely creates, her style is compassionate and spirited. She offers an especially unique and fresh portrayal of women in the South. Her most recent novel, Sights Unseen is a haunting story, dealing with the difficult problem of manic depression. Retrospectly told from the point of view of Hattie, the daughter of a manic depressive, this story focuses on one family's struggle for normality. Hattie longs for a mother who will read bedtime stories and bake cookies, but her reality is austere. Young, confused, and excluded Hattie makes painful attempts to understand and accept her mother's illness. While her family tries to protect her, Hattie finds herself the objective center of the situation. While the rest of her family seems immersed in her mother's illness, Hattie watches and absorbs. It is as if she is ghost of sorts, ever-present but uninvolved. Hattie tries desperately to belong. Her nurse and her brother are her only viable connections to the family. However, it is a relationship with her mother for which Hattie longs. Hattie's mother is incapable of such a relationship and as a result Hattie finds that passing her mother in the hall is like passing a stranger on the street. Amazingly, this is a story about depression without being depressing. This novel is a must read for mothers and daughters. In the same way many mothers and daughters flocked to the theater together to see Steel Magnolias, they should read this book together. Undoubtedly, Kaye Gibbons intended to illuminate the ups and downs of all mother-daughter relationships. It is a special bond that even the most extreme circumstances can not break. In Sights Unseen, Ms. Gibbons gracefully confronts a subject that would be difficult for most writers. It is perhaps most remarkable that Ms. Gibbons is able to write about this subject despite her own personal struggle with severe depression. This is Ms. Gibbons' fifth novel. All her novels place women as the central characters, and these women are clearly Southern. What is wonderful about her characters is they are extraordinary in an ordinary way. They are not tragic heroines. They are real women with real problems and real triumphs. They strike an unusual balance between wisdom and imprudence, strength and frailty. Ms. Gibbons' characters are like women we know; they are not Scarlett O'Hara. Ms. Gibbons' portrayal of Southern women deserves praise and recognition. Other books by Kaye Gibbons include: Ellen Foster, A Virtuous Woman,