Sight
A Novel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018
'A dazzling obsessive entry in a burgeoning genre. Unusual and absorbing... the novel as a whole exudes a strange consoling power.' – The New Yorker
'Sight delves into a lot in under 200 pages: mothers and daughters, birth and death, loss and grief, finding one's balance, the ardor and arduousness of scientific discovery. Readers willing to give themselves over to Greengrass' penetrating vision will surely expand theirs.' – NPR
'With visceral, elegantly wrought truths of life and loss, this is an exciting companion to Sheila Heti's recent Motherhood (2018).' – Booklist
In Jessie Greengrass' dazzlingly brilliant debut novel, our unnamed narrator recounts her progress to motherhood, while remembering the death of her own mother ten years before, and the childhood summers she spent with her psychoanalyst grandmother.
Woven among these personal recollections are significant events in medical history: Wilhelm Rontgen’s discovery of the X-ray; Sigmund Freud’s development of psychoanalysis and the work that he did with his daughter, Anna; and the origins of modern surgery and the anatomy of pregnant bodies.
Sight is a novel about being a parent and a child: what it is like to bring a person in to the world, and what it is to let one go. Exquisitely written and fiercely intelligent, it is an incisive exploration of how we see others, and how we might know ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greengrass's debut novel (after the story collection An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It) follows an unnamed narrator as she wrestles with new motherhood, weaving her memories into a thoughtful portrait of what it is to be both a parent and a child. The novel is divided into three acts, each corresponding to a broad period in the narrator's life: her mother's death and her own grieving; childhood summers spent with her intimidating, psychoanalyst grandmother (known only as Dr. K); and her pregnancy before the birth of her first child. Each of these sequences is in turn partnered with accounts from the development of modern medicine: in the first section, it's Wilhelm R ntgen and the discovery of X-rays; the second is Sigmund and Anna Freud's development of psychoanalysis; the third is John and William Hunter pioneering the field of anatomy. Unifying the narrator and the scientists is the singular desire to look inward (literally or figuratively) and seek "the resolution of a complicated pattern into one that could be understood." Greengrass writes with precision and honesty, providing an unconventional but nuanced, meditative experience.
