Sights Unseen
By Kaye Gibbons
Copyright 1995
Abridged Audiobook
Read by the author
Mother is manic depressive. Daughter grows up in the 1960s with ill mother. Mother goes on a wild spree with vehicle, crashes into a woman. Mother is sent to Duke for electric shock treatments. Mother returns a changed woman. Daughter finally has a mother.
That pretty much sums up this book, which is a quiet and thoughtful reminiscence about how difficult it is to be a child when your parents can't be parents because of their own issues. Maggie Barnes is a mother suffering terribly, but the family suffers too, also terribly. As with most families, there are other players - Pearl, a helpful and loving maid who looks after the two children, Mr. Barnes, the father-in-law who is overbearing and plain mean, the father, who is madly in love with his wife despite her illness.
It was rather sad listening but the book moved me, in part because I identified with some of it.
3 stars
I'd probably skip that one. There is more than enough suffering, PTSD, and mental illness to go around in our own real families.
ReplyDelete