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A review by hevleary
Sight by Jessie Greengrass
5.0
I was blown away by this debut novel which was shortlisted for the 2018 Women's Prize. Jessie Greengrass has a beautiful writing style and this book was breathtaking at times. One example of many "and we would go out into the woods behind the house and walk, bare branches like the blueprints of a church"
This short novel tells the story of an unnamed first person narrator as she deals with her feelings around pregnancy, motherhood, the death of her mother and her relationship with her grandmother. The narrative is interspersed with historical figures whom all had a significant impact on medical history- the inventor of the X-ray, Freud and psychoanalysis and the Hunter brothers who were Victorian anatomists.
I have never read a novel that made me think so much. Greengrass managed to articulate some of my own feelings about motherhood (I am not a mother and although I want children I worry about providing for them given my own desire for a career). I would have highlighted so many passages from this book but I have selected a few of my favourites which have felt particularly profound to me.
Regarding her and her husband deciding to have a child:
"because he had exhausted all argument. For him the answer was obvious: we would have a child, and the rest would follow. He didn't fear himself to be inadequate, insufficient to the task of making someone whole, nor see how afterwards, when it was too late, the ground might give beneath our feet to let us fall, the child we had wanted tumbling through the air between us"
During an ultrasound
"We ought to be holding hands, I thought, but to reach him would have meant turning my arm uncomfortably backwards at the shoulder- and my reluctance to do seemed a subtle marker of some already prevalent inadequacy in me, indelibly wrought, that I should put my own comfort first"
Regarding her mother
"What space she might have occupied had long ago been filled or had silted up- and this is the thing about death, that time lessens hurt but multiples loss"
There are so many more amazing passages dealing with her relationship with her daughter and her mother prior to her death. I could copy in the whole book but instead I will just urge you to read it.
This short novel tells the story of an unnamed first person narrator as she deals with her feelings around pregnancy, motherhood, the death of her mother and her relationship with her grandmother. The narrative is interspersed with historical figures whom all had a significant impact on medical history- the inventor of the X-ray, Freud and psychoanalysis and the Hunter brothers who were Victorian anatomists.
I have never read a novel that made me think so much. Greengrass managed to articulate some of my own feelings about motherhood (I am not a mother and although I want children I worry about providing for them given my own desire for a career). I would have highlighted so many passages from this book but I have selected a few of my favourites which have felt particularly profound to me.
Regarding her and her husband deciding to have a child:
"because he had exhausted all argument. For him the answer was obvious: we would have a child, and the rest would follow. He didn't fear himself to be inadequate, insufficient to the task of making someone whole, nor see how afterwards, when it was too late, the ground might give beneath our feet to let us fall, the child we had wanted tumbling through the air between us"
During an ultrasound
"We ought to be holding hands, I thought, but to reach him would have meant turning my arm uncomfortably backwards at the shoulder- and my reluctance to do seemed a subtle marker of some already prevalent inadequacy in me, indelibly wrought, that I should put my own comfort first"
Regarding her mother
"What space she might have occupied had long ago been filled or had silted up- and this is the thing about death, that time lessens hurt but multiples loss"
There are so many more amazing passages dealing with her relationship with her daughter and her mother prior to her death. I could copy in the whole book but instead I will just urge you to read it.