- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Pocket Books (6 May 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 074345071X
- ISBN-13: 978-0743450713
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 362,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
A beautifully-written and acutely-observed novel of relationships, of ordinary lives under extraordinary pressures. Disgraced Tory politician, Max, is unable to shake off the whiff of scandal following the suspicious death of his best friend's wife. His daughter, Maggie, believes she witnessed something which confirms Max's guilt - but she has told no one what she saw that terrible night. Max's mother, Nanda, living an unconventional life in a ramshackle cottage in Gloucestershire, observes it all with the detachment of one who is nearing her death. As these three characters move through a crucial few months, events unfold in their alternating voices, and so the truth behind the headlines gradually emerges. In this assured and acute observation of ordinary lives under extraordinary pressure, the author explores the complex nature of the bond between mother and son, father and daughter, and examines what happens when that bond is stretched to breaking point and the most basic loyalties are called into question. It makes for an absorbing, unsettling and moving read.
About the Author
Brought up in Gloucestershire and educated at Oxford, Alice Jolly has worked in London for the investment bank, Kleinwort Benson; in Poland for the World Bank, and in Brussels for the European Commission, where she still lives and now works part-time for a human rights NGO. Alice Jolly is in her early thirties. WHAT THE EYE DOESN'T SEE is her first novel.
Inside This Book
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I loved this book. I couldn't put it down for two days. The characters are so alive on the page and Alice Jolly makes you see and feel everything that they experience so vividly that you sometimes catch your breath. She has created a world that is painfully real, one that disturbs, excites, enchants. Her descriptions are so intense and the emotions she portrays so sincere.
The book charts the relationship between Maggie and her father Max, and more specifically, explores the reasons why she has lied to protect him. Max is a difficult man to love and to understand. As we are told, he is a chameleon, a man of masks, deceits, fabrications; as Maggie says, "He's a politician, what do you expect?" He cheats on his wife, he cheats on his mistress and his best friend, and he entangles his own daughter in his deceit so that she loses sight of what Truth is. Yet he is intriguing and we are hooked. The main impetus of the book is generated by our need to know Max and his secrets, and Alice Jolly skilfully feeds us with glimpses that, at the end, will reveal and explain all.
At the heart of the book there is not a character, but a place, Gloucestershire, a landscape that is ever-present, of vast billowing white clouds and fields that become waving seas of corn. We see it through the eyes of all three narrators, but most vividly through the dying eyes of Nanda, Max's mother. Alice Jolly obviously knows and loves this landscape, and she, like her characters, holds it as an imprint of home in her heart.
A beautiful book and a beguiling story, masterly written.
Format:Paperback
I enjoyed this novel for its bright observations and physiological tensions. The three voices intertwine, though early on it felt a bit too systematic, too constructed; there wasn’t an organic feel to it. Each personality is deep in a crisis of either suspected murder, facing death and doubts about love. It gathers power and speed and increasing focus as the story goes on. Occasionally Alice Jolly’s crisp writing allows some generic phrasing and observations; but more often, one is caught off-guard by sudden insights and sharp observation of the human animal under stress. The author skillfully experiments with weighty matters and especially an abundance of images. One certainly looks for significant works from this author in the future.
Format:Paperback
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The 'did he/didn't he?' mystery at the heart of the novel underpins the story but does not dominate, allowing the three narrators to establish themselves as distinct and thoroughly believable characters. I found myself caring about them more, in fact, than they seemed to care about themselves. A very good first novel and I'm looking forward to the next
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