Imprint
- John Murray
- John Murray
Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
The extraordinary first novel from the author of the prize-winning An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018
LONGLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2019 'A stunning debut' Guardian
In Jessie Greengrass' superb 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 know ourselves.
More books by Jessie Greengrass
Praise for Sight: SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018
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A stunning debut - Guardian
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Precise and moving . . . The pages on the mother's decline are a masterclass in wrenching, pitiless truth . . . the potted stories of Rontgen, Freud and Hunter form a fluid, richly associative historic narrative of investigation into the body and the mind, about seeking constantly to expand the borders of what we can see - Daily Telegraph ****
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An exceptionally accomplished debut - Observer
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The poise, intelligence and serious intent of Sight will be lauded, and rightly so. I would not be surprised to see it on heavyweight prize lists - Sunday Times
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Exceptional . . . The prose is unsentimental, measured, breathtaking in its elegance . . . remarkably moving - The Spectator
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There are echoes of WG Sebald and Rachel Cusk in this thoughtful, digressive style that swirls together the historical and the personal, but Greengrass's questing intellect and elegant prose are all her own - Guardian, 50 Books to Read Now
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This is a first novel - an original one by a writer who clearly has considerable gifts and a serious, nuanced approach to individual psychology and intellectual history - Financial Times
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Greengrass's fiercely cerebral despatch from one of life's most extraordinary rites of passage impresses linguistically, intellectually and emotionally - Mail on Sunday
Jessie Greengrass
Jessie Greengrass was born in 1982. She studied philosophy in Cambridge and London. An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It won the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award, and was shortlisted for the PFD/Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. Sight is her first novel and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.
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