Sight

by Jessie Greengrass

Hardcover, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

823.92

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Fiction

Publication

John Murray (2018), Edition: First Edition

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML: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… (more)

Media reviews

The Irish Times

Sight gives an authoritative account of one woman’s decision to become a mother, while simultaneously weaving in biographical stories of famous visionaries down through the centuries....But this is not a novel about uncertainty; the narrator is clear from the beginning that she would like a

child. What she ties herself up in knots over is the question as to whether she would make a good mother. Greengrass sets up this interesting philosophical topic with ease, drawing the reader in with a voice that is fiercely intelligent and always probing ...The reflection-heavy narrative of Sight, which is virtually dialogue free, weighs on the reader at times, particularly in the closing section. For all its meticulous thought, not a whole lot happens. Readers who are interested in philosophy, parenting and heredity will nonetheless be satisfied...Readers hoping for a plot might also wonder, but this accomplished and melancholic work nonetheless offers what the narrator herself calls “a lifetime’s inculcated faith in the explanatory power of books”

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The Guardian (UK)

here is a moment early in Sight when the narrator observes: “Revelation is by definition isolate, it can neither be communicated nor transferred, and trying to comprehend it we feel only the chill of our own exclusion.” The search for knowledge – whether human advancement or self-awareness

– and its accompanying wonders and hazards are at the heart of Jessie Greengrass’s fiercely intelligent and assured first novel...This ambiguous tension between intimate knowledge and inevitable distance in parent-child relationships is weaved deftly through the novel. The narrator describes caring for her cancer-ridden mother, and the grief and depression she experienced when she was left without parents at the age of 21...Beyond its insights into grief, motherhood and the monotonous yet exquisite rhythm of quotidian family life, Sight is also a bold experiment in form...Stylistically, Sight is confident and measured, and although the prose can at times feel distant – for all her confidences, the narrator keeps the reader at arm’s length, and the fragmented, nonlinear storytelling does not encourage deep emotional engagement – it nonetheless has a hypnotic quality to it

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The Guardian (UK)

What we can know of our bodies, ourselves, or each other is the subject of Jessie Greengrass’s debut novel. The author of an award-winning short story collection, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It, Greengrass adapts to the novel format with enviable

flexibility. Or rather, she adapts it to her own specific literary sensibilities: ruminative, taking a judicious distance from things, just far enough to see the links between them, but not so far she misses their textures....The long trails of thought sometimes break off this way, on a dash and a line break; Greengrass employs the same device to register dialogue, as if speaking were just an interruption in the flow of our internal monologue...By using words like ruminative or meditative to describe the book, I am not implying it is messy or haphazard. On the contrary, the writing is poised – but as if on the edge of a precipice. Hovering between the novel and the essay, unfolding through long, languorous sentences, Sight builds meaning through juxtaposition, through surprising mirrorings and parallels...It’s the inability to know anything for sure that Greengrass tracks across her story; we fear the things we can’t see, and validate or classify, but they are the very things that make us live

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User reviews

LibraryThing member charl08

There's an awful lot here about motherhood and being pregnant, and the gap between a parent and child. And whilst I don't think that I have to identify with a character to enjoy a book, I felt quite shut out by this one. I was reminded of Rachel Cusk (the slightly blurred I narrative, the focus on

personal experience). I did enjoy the sections about the history of medicine: the problem was I didn't want to go back to the navel gazing mother narrative. Fascinating stuff about discovering the anatomy of pregnancy, and Freud and his daughter Anna

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LibraryThing member miss.mesmerized

When is the best moment to have a child? Can you ever be ready to become a parent? And what does being a “good” parent actually mean? Jessie Greengrass unnamed narrator has to face these questions. Her husbands would like to have children, she is unsure. Her own childhood comes to her mind, her

mother and grandmother, the way they treated her when she was a child, their complex family relationships and the fact that neither her mother not her grandmother is still alive. Yet, families and relationships are never easy, thus, Röntgen and Freud come to her mind as well as the beginnings of modern child birth.

Jessie Greengrass debut novel directly made it to the short list of the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction. It is an unexpected and uncommon combination of medical history, on the one hand, and a very personal reflection on the narrator’s own life and her feelings about motherhood. It starts with the narrator confronted with the essential question of becoming a mother or not when suddenly her rumination is interrupted by the report about Röntgen. Again and again, these two perspectives alternate which is interesting, but also difficult to follow since it often seems to lack a red thread. They are not isolated accounts, she cleverly combines the topics, e.g. her grandmother was a psychoanalyst like Freud, to give a reason for these interludes.

I can see why the novel made it to the Women’s Prize for Fiction’s short list. The topic tackles a core question of human beings and a deep wish we all share: knowing something for sure, being able to use medical precision for personal decisions and knowing that you do the right thing. Being able to look at something from a neutral and objective point of view, analysing and then making a decision – that’s what we often wish for, however, that’s not how life works.

Contradictory emotions, uncertainty – a lot of apparent opposites come together in the novel. Even though I found the narrator’s thoughts often easy to following and from a topical point of view most interesting, the novel as a whole did not completely convince me. I would have liked to stick with the narrator’s thoughts. Maybe it was all a bit too philosophical for my understanding.

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LibraryThing member babs605

I couldn't get into this book. I think the author was trying too hard by using a lot of big words and run-on sentences when a shorter description would have been better. I also didn't get the "2 stories in one" thing she had going on. Maybe it came together later in the book, but I never got that

far. I think this is the only book I've never finished.

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LibraryThing member lauriebrown54

Told in three sections, the nameless narrator explores being a daughter taking care of her dying mother, a granddaughter with her psychoanalyst grandmother, and a mother. Tied to these meditations are the stories of Roentgen’s discovery of the X-ray, Sigmund and Anna Freud’s work in

psychoanalysis, and the beginnings of modern surgery and the study of babies in the uterus. This is not a plot driven novel, nor is it strong on character- we learn little about the narrator. It’s a kind of meditation on seeing ourselves- body and mind and how we change depending on our roles.

It was a slow read for only 200 pages. It seems like a book I’m supposed to like, but actually don’t. I suspect it’s too intellectual for me. I found it interesting but I was not drawn into it. Three stars.

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LibraryThing member bemislibrary

Greengrass provides a thoughtful look at how being pregnant and becoming a mother is closely interwoven with the relationship one’s own mother. Filled with colorful descriptions, at time she provides examples overrun with emotions that are offset by the casual historic review of surgical

procedures. A sense of helplessness and sadness causes the author to become an impartial observer to retain some sense of sanity.

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LibraryThing member PDCRead

The narrator of the book is currently expecting her second child, with her partner, Johannes. This second time around in her life is causing her to contemplate the relationships that she had with her late grandmother and her mother, as well as the effects of having a second child will have on the

bond she has with her daughter. To better comprehend the complexity of being a parent and a child at the same time she spends time in the Wellcome Trust library reading various books. Whilst she is in the library she discovers and reads the works of Wilhelm Röntgen, and the X-Rays he discovered, and about Anna Freud, daughter of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s and John Hunter, the pioneer of modern surgery.

There was a lot that I liked about this book; the recollection of her childhood with her grandmother and the time that she spent there and her looking after her mother at the end of her life and how she sees her kinship developing with her own children make for fascinating reading. She has a beautiful way of writing too, it is sparse and yet eloquent.
However, I thought that the wandering off into the realms of Freud and the other medical practitioners really didn't fit with the rest of the story for me. I get the psychoanalyst link to Freud with her grandmother, but it distracted from the story. Greengrass is definitely an author to watch though.

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