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40th out of 183 books
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35 voters
Evidence of Things Unseen
This poetic novel, by the acclaimed author of John Dollar, describes America at the brink of the Atomic Age. In the years between the two world wars, the future held more promise than peril, but there was evidence of things unseen that would transfigure our unquestioned trust in a safe future. Fos has returned to Tennessee from the trenches of France. Intrigued with electr...more
Paperback, 400 pages
Published
May 25th 2004
by Simon & Schuster
(first published 2003)
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In this world where bombs are dropped to end a war; where people living in clean, new, identical houses and whose sons spend dreamy summer evenings in tents in the back, build the atomic bomb and cheer when it explodes because it means more money for them and their town, how can you believe in love or other wonderful unseen things? Flash, Opal, Fos and Lighfoot are all searching for clues about the truth about who they are and what they want in life and what is real and good while, just like the...more
The first thing I noticed in this book was Wiggen’s use of poetic language. Beautiful. But in the beginning of the book at least, it was too much for me. Like too many plums in the pudding, too much sauce on the pasta. Tasty gems need a matrix to shine against. When it’s all chocolate chips and no cookie it can become cloying. The writing, lovely as it was, slowed me down because it kept bringing attention to itself. I love gorgeous writing, but when I’m reading a novel I don’t want to keep stop...more
9 likes · like · see review
This is a touching story of the tender love between Fos and Opal. Fos is a man who has always been fascinated by things that glow...falling stars in the night sky; bioluminescence in the dark sea.
He accidentally finds Opal when his truck breaks down while he is in NC to see the meteor showers. Opal is quite the repairman so she has him on the road again quickly...and she's with him.
The author, Marianne Wiggins, deserves a Pulitzer Prize for this novel. It is a riveting story of America before an...more
He accidentally finds Opal when his truck breaks down while he is in NC to see the meteor showers. Opal is quite the repairman so she has him on the road again quickly...and she's with him.
The author, Marianne Wiggins, deserves a Pulitzer Prize for this novel. It is a riveting story of America before an...more
1 like · like · see review
I’m not the kind of person to gush. I believe that the 80-20 ratio of great to mediocre applies to all things, including books. So when I do gush, I mean it. And I’m gushing.
Evidence of Things Unseen covers the range of historical events from one great war to the next through the lives of Ray and Opal. More than an examination of America during the interwar years, this is a novel about death, love, and, above all, the search for a meaning to illuminate our lives. Wiggins's writing is luminous,...more
Evidence of Things Unseen covers the range of historical events from one great war to the next through the lives of Ray and Opal. More than an examination of America during the interwar years, this is a novel about death, love, and, above all, the search for a meaning to illuminate our lives. Wiggins's writing is luminous,...more
4 likes · like · see review
An epic poetic book intertwining the story of a young couple between World War I and the end of World War II, the history of x-rays and the atomic bomb. Fos is a young man who has always been fascinated by luminescence, and by science and technology. He falls in love with a country woman, Opal, and they build a life together. The story follows them and their son through the depression, the second World War, and the years after. Luminescence__---shooting stars, x-rays, photography, chemical flare...more
I thought this book was spectacularly well-written, with gorgeous language and very clever use of mathematical and scientific language to create romantic descriptions. There were several very obvious "themes" woven throughout, which I found enjoyable, but I acknowledge that other reviews thought they were overdone or contrived. I loved them and found the use of "Light" and "Radiance" throughout to be very interesting. I also thought hanging elements of the story on a "Moby Dick" frame was cool (...more
Ray Foster is fascinated with light. During the war he helps light up the battlefield so that the soldiers can see what is in front of them. After the war he continues to follow his amateur chemist’s investigations. He is always trying to discover new “natural” lighting and a way to recreate it with science. When Flash, a former war buddy, asks Ray to start a photography business with him, Ray is in his glory.
On one of his amateur investigations of light, Ray meets a girl names Opal. The name s...more
On one of his amateur investigations of light, Ray meets a girl names Opal. The name s...more
I will be thinking about this book for a while. At its heart, it's a love story, but it's tied up in physics and chemistry and the era between the world wars when science was first a hobby for the masses: a whole new way of understanding the mechanics of the world around you. Wiggins' works often involve trying to understand a parent who has been lost in some way, and the effect that vacancy has on understanding yourself. But they are also forgiving books that identify with both the parent and t...more
I really enjoyed this book. As it may be clear from the book's I've been reviewing, I'm reading the five National Book Award nominees from the past ten years. This book was nominated, but didn't win in 2004. I began and finished it on vacation where I became engaged, but I don't think that clouded my judgment of this novel, though it is a love story. To my surprise (as I don't generally know the plots of any of the books I've been checking out from the library and am pretty dismayed at how many...more
I kept encountering positive reviews of this book, but the description always left me unmoved -- according to the back of the book, it "describes America at the brink of the Atomic Age. In the years between the two world wars, the future held more promise than peril, but there was evidence of things unseen that would transfigure our unquestioned trust in a safe future." That sounds tiresome, yes? Fortunately for me, we can completely disregard that explanation. This book was truly winsome. Okay,...more
Marianne Wiggins for vice president!!!! I love this book...I am completely enamored by Marianne Wiggins' writing. The story of Fos and Opal and Flash and Lightfoot is beautiful and tragic and fascinating. I think The ShadowCatcher is a great American novel and I think this one is an even greater American novel...READ IT!!!! I'm even contemplating going back to Moby Dick and actually reading it this time, as I failed to do so junior year of high school.
This book was sort of like a road trip; history flew by in the window that was Fos and Opal's eyes. The writing is incredibly beautiful, but the sheer mass of the beauty nearly overshadowed the characters. History was almost more important than the characters, and in the end I hardly felt as though I knew Fos and Opal. Time just floated by, which I think was an effect done purposely, but it left me feeling dizzy. Characters blurred into one another--partly because quotations were not used for di...more
This historically-inspired poetic story transported me to a time and place that has all but been lost in the history books. Wiggins' lilting prose and dialogue gradually seeped into my mind, and as I read about Opal and Fos and Flash and Lightfoot, I became an inhabitant of the Tennessee River Valley, seeing what they saw and feeling what they felt. Although the TVA and Oak Ridge National Laboratories are well-known to most Americans, this book taught me about the human cost of our infatuation w...more
I've been carrying this book around and meaning to read it since a friend gave it to me a few years back. Finally read it last week. Wiggins writes beautifully and the love story between the quirky (but not annoyingly so) Fos and Opal is one I won't forget. Most of the story takes place between the first and second world wars, and I loved reading about the post-Depression years, New Deal projects, and WW2 -- the author does a good job of capturing the optimism and skepticism of the time and the...more
“On the night they found Lightfoot, the stars were falling down.” Marianne Wiggins’s novel, The Evidence of Things Unseen, opens with a chapter containing a single paragraph that describes a glass desert and two eternal lovers, presumably dead. The rest of the book narrates the story of these lovers. The opening words of the narrative introduce the reader to two important elements in the relationship of these lovers. Lightfoot is the son of Opal and Ray Foster, the protagonists. The falling sta...more
This beautiful novel concerns Fos and Opal, and, eventually, their son Lightfoot, and their lives in Tennessee during the first half of the 20th century. Interested in scientific phenomenon (especially those to do with luminescence), Fos returns from WWI and joins his friend Flash in running a photography studio in Knoxville. On a trip to North Carolina, Fos meets Opal, daughter of a glass blower and good with numbers. She becomes the book-keeper for the business. When tragedy and scandal destro...more
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On one level, this is an insightful, moving portrait of complex relationships between an amateur scientist, his impulsive best friend, his wife, and his son. Although each character is uniquely and vividly drawn, each is also a symbol, and their lives act as metaphors for larger themes: the price of scientific and technological progress, the American Dream, and the enduring power of love. Set between the two world wars, the novel weaves personal tragedy with large-scale tragedy, as the protagoni...more
What can I say that hasn't been said in the other reviews? I loved the way the author puts together a sentence and I found myself reading many sentences over and over again, just like overeating. And then I lost the story and had to get myself back on the wagon. As much as we know about Opal, however, I didn't find myself loving her character like I did Fos's until toward the end of the book. Did she have to be ill for me to understand her? I always knew that Fos loved her but it took some convi...more
This book did not pass my "40 page" rule that I should really be into it after 40 pages. However, I was reading it for a face-to-face book club and was determined to finish. The further I got into it, the more I liked it. By the time I reached the last third of the book, I was reading it avidly. This book brings up many issues for thought and discussion. It has several themes running through it such as the theme of light. I appreciated the author's clever ways of putting things. I would agree th...more
(A Study in Prose)
I read Marianne Wiggins’ Evidence of Things Unseen, years ago, and despite the fact that I’ve forgotten many of the details of the story, I do recall how her prose left me swooning. I’ve pulled it from my shelf, today, to review this prose; to try to discover just what it was about it that impressed me so thoroughly. I’ll extract the prologue, entitled white sands, because I remember that I read it numerous times, and even out loud to my husband, so moved was I. I type it out...more
I read Marianne Wiggins’ Evidence of Things Unseen, years ago, and despite the fact that I’ve forgotten many of the details of the story, I do recall how her prose left me swooning. I’ve pulled it from my shelf, today, to review this prose; to try to discover just what it was about it that impressed me so thoroughly. I’ll extract the prologue, entitled white sands, because I remember that I read it numerous times, and even out loud to my husband, so moved was I. I type it out...more
Absolutely beautiful book. I read it as slowly as I possibly could so as to savor it.
This is the kind of book which initially I regarded with a degree of mistrust, then grew to like as I was reading it, but which ultimately fell in my estimation after I’d finished it. At first it seemed to be a hyper-Literary attempt to write a Great American Novel in the vein of Faulkner or Steinbeck, and in that regard it seems to end up rather hopelessly muddled and politically suspect.
I’m always reluctant to use ‘pretentious’ as a term of disparagement, but it frequently seemed over-ambitio...more
I’m always reluctant to use ‘pretentious’ as a term of disparagement, but it frequently seemed over-ambitio...more
Wiggins writing is beautiful. Her use of the cliches and the vernacular her characters would use is thorough. She does away with quotation marks which helps to maintain the poetic flow of her writing. I ultimately like the book, but it did take me a long time to get into it. I felt the characters were being read at a distance, that the narration prevented an up close observation. I normally like books where the reader feels that they are getting an intimate look at the characters and their thoug...more
Her writing style is amazing! Beautiful and lilting. I had a bit of a hard time getting into the story, but it certainly was worth sticking with reading it.
I really liked her characterizations. I saw her characters vividly -- both their physical beings and their personalities. I loved the way she wove her ideas about thing unseen through the fabric of the story.
I found it interesting and scary that we tend as a country and as a species to rush headlong into new technologies and often don't real...more
I really liked her characterizations. I saw her characters vividly -- both their physical beings and their personalities. I loved the way she wove her ideas about thing unseen through the fabric of the story.
I found it interesting and scary that we tend as a country and as a species to rush headlong into new technologies and often don't real...more
I've only read three of her books, but I'm a big fan of Marianne Wiggins's writing since I read "Separate Checks" a couple of decades ago.
There are just some perfect, I was going to say turn of phrases, but really turn of passages that describe experiences in life, between people, and between a person and their life.
There were descriptions near the beginning of Márquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera" that so perfectly describe long term relationships. You could feel your experience in words tha...more
There are just some perfect, I was going to say turn of phrases, but really turn of passages that describe experiences in life, between people, and between a person and their life.
There were descriptions near the beginning of Márquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera" that so perfectly describe long term relationships. You could feel your experience in words tha...more
Beautifully written engaging story about love, loss and life. I enjoyed all of the characters and the happiness and tragic-ness of their lives. The ending reminded me of Castaway with Tom Hanks, but hey, it could happen. Despite the desire to feel that the ending seems oversimplified,or too easily wrapped up, the journey is heartbreaking and breathtaking. I thoroughly enjoyed this story.
Favorite quotes:
"Still, as much as she was headstrong, single-minded, and self-made, she could see a vision o...more
Favorite quotes:
"Still, as much as she was headstrong, single-minded, and self-made, she could see a vision o...more
i think i pulled this off someone else's "to read" list, intrigued by the oak ridge, TN connection (my hometown). just one section happens in oak ridge, during its "secret city" phase of building the atomic bomb in WWII, but there are lots of references to knoxville, the Smokies, and NC. so i felt kind of at home.
the plot is rather epic and gave me a "grapes of wrath" vibe (it's also set partly during the depression era). it took me a while to get into it, but i was eventually very drawn in by t...more
the plot is rather epic and gave me a "grapes of wrath" vibe (it's also set partly during the depression era). it took me a while to get into it, but i was eventually very drawn in by t...more
This book was chosen for my book club. We had a great discussion on it and like most of the books we choose 1/2 liked it and 1/2 disliked it. I belonged to the group that wasn't too impressed by it.
Evidence of Things Unseen tells the story of Fos, his wife Opal, their son Lightfoot, and Fos's best friend and work partner Flash. Set in the 1920's to 1920's in Tennesse.
At first I really enjoyed it, how Fos and Opal met, the sentences were beautiful and tender. My favorite part described the first...more
Evidence of Things Unseen tells the story of Fos, his wife Opal, their son Lightfoot, and Fos's best friend and work partner Flash. Set in the 1920's to 1920's in Tennesse.
At first I really enjoyed it, how Fos and Opal met, the sentences were beautiful and tender. My favorite part described the first...more
A wonderful book about love--of wife, husband, friend, child, life.
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| What's The Name o...: Tennessee Valley Authority [s] | 8 | 192 | Apr 06, 2013 02:33pm | |
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Marianne Wiggins is the author of seven books of fiction including John Dollar and Evidence of Things Unseen. She has won an NEA grant, the Whiting Writers' Award, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and she was a National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-finalist in fiction for Evidence of Things Unseen.
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“Maybe there are moments between any two adults in love when the age of one of them dissolves before the other's eyes, when the first refuge of the soul at its creation is laid bare and skinless as a sunbeam through a window. Innocence and vulnerability, two unmeasurable quantities...Perhaps that is the essence of the protection's intimacy, that it dwells in camouflage and justifies itself in stillness.”
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7 people liked it
“Wherever love comes from, whatever is its genesis, it isn’t like a quantity of gold or diamonds, even water in the earth-a fixed quantity, Fos thought. You can’t use up love, deplete it at its source. Love exists beyond fixed limits. Beyond what you can see or count.”
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3 people liked it
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Jun 19, 2010 11:53pm