Sights Unseen (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Kaye Gibbons
- First Published: 1995
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The early 1990’s, with flashbacks to the 1960’s
- Setting: Bend of the River, a small community in eastern North Carolina
- Principal Characters: Harriet Barnes, Maggie Barnes, Mr. Barnes, Pearl Wiggins
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: Family or family life, Mothers, Parents and children, South or Southerners, Mental illness, Women, Accidents, Death or dying
- Locales: Bend of the River, NC
When Kaye Gibbons’ Ellen Foster (1987) was published, critics hailed her protagonist’s youthful, abrasive voice as a new addition to southern literature. Since then, Gibbons’ novels have offered her readers glimpses into other haunting interiors, primarily showing psychological tensions between southern women.
In Sights Unseen, her fifth novel, Gibbons continues to explore familial terrain using first-person narration, this time in an attempt to uncover the memories of Harriet Barnes, only daughter of a manic-depressive mother. Told from Harriet’s...
[The entire page is 2011 words long]
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