What Is Visible (Elkins)

Book Reviews
What Is Visible contemplates the bare requisites of being human, more fundamentally than most meditations on haves and have-nots. When Laura is put on display, she wants to be seen as “a present to them all from God, to show how little one can possess of what we think it means to be human while still possessing full humanity.” A novel’s extraordinary power is to allow a reader to take possession of the inner life of another. This one provides entree 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


Based on historical fact, this fictional portrait of Laura Bridgeman, the world’s first deaf and blind prodigy (also living without the senses of taste or smell), is an engrossing and moving read. (Best Books of 2014: Most inspirational.)
Woman's Day


(Starred review.) Laura Bridgman...has been all but forgotten by history. Fortunately, Elkins revives this historical figure with a wonderfully imaginative and scrupulously researched debut novel.... 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.”
Publishers Weekly


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. (Fiction Pick of the Month-June 2014.)
BookPage


The audacious liberties Elkins takes—inventing a romance for Laura, taking great pains to highlight the most tragically ironic hypocrisies of her famous caregivers—make the story sometimes feel like a writer's exercise rather than a novel. However, Elkins does inspire the reader to imagine life experienced only through touch. —Nicole R. Steeves, Chicago P.L.
Library Journal


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. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist


The story of Helen Keller's forgotten forerunner comes nimbly to life in Elkins' debut novel.... Flitting back and forth over the course of a half-century, the novel is told from alternating viewpoints, including Laura's own.... An affecting portrait which finally provides its idiosyncratic heroine with a worthy voice.
Kirkus Reviews