ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 31, 1995 TAG: 9512290100
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY LUCY LEE
SIGHTS UNSEEN. By Kaye Gibbons. G.P. Putnam's Sons. $19.95.
It's hard enough growing up in a household of fairly "normal" people. Hattie Barnes grew up in a family dominated by her mother, Maggie, who suffered from manic depression.
She remembers that she, her brother and father never had time to heal between Maggie's highs and lows. ``She would tear our souls, and when we thought the house was safe again, there she would go.''
Maggie's brief periods of stability "were celebrated and remembered by my family as though they were spectacular occurrences, like total eclipses or meteor showers."
In the opening chapter of her memoir, Hattie wonders how, in such an environment, she and her brother "turned out." She observes, "A girl cannot go along motherless without life's noticing, taking a compensatory tuck here and there in the heart and in the mind, letting out one seam or another whenever she is threatened by her loneliness."
Hattie's story takes on added poignancy when she describes her childhood reactions to Maggie's illness. She wanted her mother to be well so she could have friends over to play. "They would see my room, something no child outside my family had yet done. Other children from school always rode the bus home together, giggling as they disembarked and talking about building forts in pine thickets, about listening to records and learning new dances. I never went to anyone's house."
Hattie kept a list of things she and her mother could do together when she was well. "I wanted her to sit on the edge of my bed at night and talk to me the way June Cleaver sometimes talked to Beaver. I wanted her to cook something, anything, and let me help her. ... She could fix my hair in a French braid, something Olive did for me, although she called the braid a `big cornrow.'''
Other family members are not exactly a barrel of fun. Aunt Menefee "was the sort of woman who drives men to other women." Uncle Lawrence "had the look of a man who never gets to go anywhere, whose idea of cutting loose becomes two hours at a matinee movie with a tub of popcorn all his own."
Hattie's grandfather "was called Mr. Barnes by anyone who was not in the position to call him Father. He bristled at familiarity and spurned his grandchildren's hopes for intimacy."
And Hattie remembers her father being "the tiredest person I ever knew." As Maggie's chief caretaker, his role is shaped by her moods. "Manic, she could not keep her hands off him. Depressed, she seemed to loathe him and all he did." In both states she keeps him physically and emotionally exhausted.
Considering the trauma, loneliness and rejection Hattie endures until her mother recovers, her final analysis of those 12 years is not quite believable: "Until I sat down to conjure her memory, I had forgotten the worry and wounds of my childhood."
Perhaps it's because Hattie does not describe the 15 years between her mother's "cure" and her death - a block of time that could account for much healing.
Maggie's recovery comes just in time for Hattie. "
"Sights Unseen" is Gibbons' fifth novel. It should be every bit as popular as her last one, "Charms for the Easy Life," and her first, the prize-winning "Ellen Foster." Gibbons' usual focus on Southern women who face the complexities of life with extraordinary courage, her compelling narrative and memorable characters, make this book a "must read."
Lucy Lee is a free-lance writer in Roanoke.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Kaye Gibbons, author of "Sights Unseen."|by CNB