To the good citizens of Bend of the River, North Carolina, the exotic Maggie Barnes is 'not right. 'flighty' or, more politely, the Barnes woman with all the problems.
To her family, and most particularly her growing daughter Hattie Barnes, Maggie is a maddening and beloved paradox: quite clearly depresive, yet a beautiful, generous, satin-clad siren, vivacious and captivating, infuriating, violent and heartless.
Through Hattie's anguished and loving eyes a profoundly original and devastating portrait of her mother unfolds Wry, gentle, irresistibly comic yet unsparing in its depiction of a child's despairing love fot a damaged parent, Sights Unseen is also the story of the marvellous extended Barnes family, Maggie's loving, desperate husband Frederick, her teenage son, the monstrous and indulgent patriarch Grandfather Barnes, and long-suffering black maid Pearl Wiggins.
With their separate strategies for dealing with the impossible Maggie, all are drawn with tenderness and humour, suffusing Kaye Gibbons extraordinary novel not with pain but redemptive joy and unquestioning love.
Hard cover

Condition: Good