★ 03/10/2014
Laura Bridgman lost all her senses but that of touch due to a fever at age two. Though she was an internationally renowned figure in the mid-19th century, Laura has been all but forgotten by history. Fortunately, Elkins revives this historical figure with a wonderfully imaginative and scrupulously researched debut novel. Arriving at the Perkins Institution as a child, Laura learns to read, write, and “speak” through signing via the manual alphabet, with letters tapped out on her hand. Though she receives hundreds of visitors at “Exhibition Days,” Laura has few friends or family members who care about her. She is intensely attached to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe from the institution, and suffers virtual abandonment when he marries to begin a family of his own. Howe, acting in accordance with the religious and scientific mores of his time, thwarts the dreams and desires of the women around him, including his wife, Julia Ward; Laura’s teacher, Sarah Wight; and Laura herself. But despite the many physiological and social restrictions placed on her, Laura comes across as a willful, mysterious marvel, showing “how little one can posses of what we think it means to be human while still possessing full humanity.” (June)
"WHAT IS VISIBLE contemplates the bare requisites of being human, more fundamentally than most meditations on haves and have-nots... A novel's extraordinary power is to allow a reader to take possession of the inner life of another. This one provides entrée to a nearly unthinkable life, and while no one would want to live there, it's a fascinating place to visit."—Barbara Kingsolver, New York Times Book Review
"Kimberly Elkins gives Bridgman her defiant due in reimagining her fascinating, now-forgotten story... The world Elkins discovers within is anything but muted. In tactile prose, she evokes a soul and a body with hungers (yes, there is sex) that none of Bridgman's guides begins to imagine."—The Atlantic Magazine
"Kimberly Elkins's wonderful novel salvages [Laura Bridgman's] story from the sunken wreckage of history and tells it anew in riveting, poignant detail... "What is Visible" illuminates the historical blindness of men - and women's struggles to be seen and heard. The novel is infused with longing and rich with detail about the social reforms of the Victorian era, the quest for rights and freedom for women and slaves, for the disabled and the poor.... Elkins makes this great American woman visible again, in all her remarkable, fully human complexity."—The Washington Post
"An engrossing and moving read."—Woman's Day (A "Best Book of 2014")
"The best historical fiction offers readers a new look at a well-known subject, or illuminates an episode or individual that has been lost to history. Playwright Kimberly Elkins achieves the latter in What Is Visible, a strikingly original debut novel."—BookPage Fiction Top Pick, June 2014
"WHAT IS VISIBLE is remarkable at many levels. It is written in an intelligent, intricate style, populated with many true historical figures, and teeming with convincing period details. Above all, the novel has a unique narrative structure, which illustrates the art of fiction at its best in presenting the interior. A splendid debut indeed."—Ha Jin, National Book Award Winner for Waiting
"I know firsthand how brutally difficult it is to write a creatively rich, humanly revealing novel based on real people in a distant time. Kimberly Elkins does this brilliantly. WHAT IS VISIBLE is not only a compelling, deeply moving novel, it is a fully realized work of art. This is an auspicious debut of an important new writer."—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
"An astonishing debut that vividly brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history. You'll recognize many of the characters in WHAT IS VISIBLE, but its heroine, Laura Bridgman, is likely someone you've never heard of. After you read it, you'll never forget her. Beautiful, heart-wrenching, and at times quite funny, this book is a marvel."—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Maine and The Engagements
"I found myself slowly mesmerized by WHAT IS VISIBLE, and then increasingly haunted and bound to the story of Laura Bridgman, the second, deeper, darker invisibility of her life so permanently excavated and restored to memory by the talented hand of Kimberly Elkins and her extraordinary powers of imagination. To say that I was profoundly moved by this novel would be an understatement."—Bob Shacochis, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
"A wonderfully imaginative and scrupulously researched debut novel... [The protagonist] comes across as a willful, mysterious marvel, showing 'how little one can posses of what we think it means to be human while still possessing full humanity.'"—Publishers Weekly (STARRED)
"An affecting portrait which finally provides its idiosyncratic heroine with a worthy voice."—Kirkus Reviews
"Told in alternating chapters by Laura, Howe, his poet wife, and Laura's beloved teacher, this is a complex, multilayered portrait of a woman who longed to communicate and to love and be loved. Elkins fully captures her difficult nature and her relentless pursuit of connection."—Booklist
"I found myself slowly mesmerized by WHAT IS VISIBLE, and then increasingly haunted and bound to the story of Laura Bridgman, the second, deeper, darker invisibility of her life so permanently excavated and restored to memory by the talented hand of Kimberly Elkins and her extraordinary powers of imagination. To say that I was profoundly moved by this novel would be an understatement."
"An astonishing debut that vividly brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history. You'll recognize many of the characters in WHAT IS VISIBLE, but its heroine, Laura Bridgman, is likely someone you've never heard of. After you read it, you'll never forget her. Beautiful, heart-wrenching, and at times quite funny, this book is a marvel."
"I know firsthand how brutally difficult it is to write a creatively rich, humanly revealing novel based on real people in a distant time. Kimberly Elkins does this brilliantly. WHAT IS VISIBLE is not only a compelling, deeply moving novel, it is a fully realized work of art. This is an auspicious debut of an important new writer."
"WHAT IS VISIBLE is remarkable at many levels. It is written in an intelligent, intricate style, populated with many true historical figures, and teeming with convincing period details. Above all, the novel has a unique narrative structure, which illustrates the art of fiction at its best in presenting the interior. A splendid debut indeed."
Joanne Howarth narrates this fictionalized account of the life of Laura Bridgman, who lost all of her senses except touch at the age of 2. She lived as the most prominent student at the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston for the most of nineteenth century. Howarth deftly manages the narrative voices of Laura; Dr. Howe, the head of the school; his wife, Julia Ward Howe (who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”); and Laura’s teacher, Sarah. She draws a vivid picture of Laura, with an impatient, often petulant, tone, particularly when she’s young, which strongly contrasts with Dr. Howe’s impervious, patriarchal manner. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Joanne Howarth narrates this fictionalized account of the life of Laura Bridgman, who lost all of her senses except touch at the age of 2. She lived as the most prominent student at the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston for the most of nineteenth century. Howarth deftly manages the narrative voices of Laura; Dr. Howe, the head of the school; his wife, Julia Ward Howe (who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”); and Laura’s teacher, Sarah. She draws a vivid picture of Laura, with an impatient, often petulant, tone, particularly when she’s young, which strongly contrasts with Dr. Howe’s impervious, patriarchal manner. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
2014-04-17
The story of Helen Keller's forgotten forerunner comes nimbly to life in Elkins' debut novel.Born in 1829, Laura Bridgman was just 2 years old when she contracted scarlet fever. She survived but lost all senses except touch. At 7, she was sent to Boston to live with Samuel Gridley Howe, founder of the Perkins Institute, who taught her tactile sign language, tapped out in the palm of the hand, which eventually enabled her to read, write and do arithmetic as well as hold conversations. As word of Howe's achievement spread, Laura herself grew famous. A miracle girl whose renown was rivaled only by Queen Victoria, she was celebrated in the press and even written about by Dickens. Yet she remained an experiment for Howe. After he acquired a family and her development plateaued, she was increasingly left trapped in her own inner world. Flitting back and forth over the course of a half-century, the novel is told from alternating viewpoints, including Laura's own. She is at once savvy and naïve, and as she strives to understand the world through touch alone, she falls in love with Howe, campaigns to be allowed glass eyes and access to the Bible, and has an intensely physical affair with an orphaned Irish girl. A little too much is made of the latter event, along with bouts of anorexia and self-harming, though the historical background is elegantly sketched. In her late 50s, Laura meets 8-year-old Helen Keller, already known as "the second Laura Bridgman." ("The second, and I'm still here!" she huffs.) Other perspectives contextualize her celebrity and include those of Howe; his headstrong wife, Julia, a writer, abolitionist and suffragist; and Laura's favorite teacher, who marries a missionary and meets a tragic end. An affecting portrait which finally provides its idiosyncratic heroine with a worthy voice.
