SIGHT UNSEEN

Fiction (Literary Fiction)

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A moving novel set in the closing months of World War I. Tom Massingham, a young working-class soldier from Norfolk, has lost his sight at the Front. In the Winter of 1917 he comes to a hospital for blinded soldiers in London, where he falls in love with Grace, a plain, middle-class nurse from Chelsea. As he slowly acquires the skills necessary to live as a blind man, and learns to accept his condition, we are drawn by the author’s clear prose into imagining a sightless world. We also learn of Tom’s shameful secret, which threatens the new life he is building: his blindness is a belated consequence of his infection with syphilis, contracted from his 21st birthday encounter with a prostitute. We also come to know Edward, a charismatic blind soldier who becomes Tom’s best friend, Rose, a pretty, happy-go-lucky nurse from the slums of Woolwich, and Eliza, Tom’s twin sister, who experiences heartbreak working in a TB hospital. When Armistice Day comes it brings hope of a new life, but also of a world changed forever for these friends and lovers. Ms available, 80,000 words.

 

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