Sights Unseen

Starred review from July 31, 1995
``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.

November 4, 1996
A girl struggles to relate to her mentally ill mother.