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    What Is Visible: A Novel
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    What Is Visible: A Novel
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    What Is Visible: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    What Is Visible: A Novel

    Written by Kimberly Elkins

    Narrated by Joanne Howarth

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

    Bookpage Best Books of 2014

    Woman's Day "Most Inspirational Book of 2014"

    Women's National Book Association Great Group Reads Pick for 2014

    A vividly original literary novel based on the astounding true-life story of Laura Bridgman, the first deaf and blind person who learned language and blazed a trail for Helen Keller.
    At age two, Laura Bridgman lost four of her five senses to scarlet fever. At age seven, she was taken to Perkins Institute in Boston to determine if a child so terribly afflicted could be taught. At age twelve, Charles Dickens declared her his prime interest for visiting America. And by age twenty, she was considered the nineteenth century's second most famous woman, having mastered language and charmed the world with her brilliance. Not since The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has a book proven so profoundly moving in illuminating the challenges of living in a completely unique inner world.

    With Laura-by turns mischievous, temperamental, and witty-as the book's primary narrator, the fascinating kaleidoscope of characters includes the founder of Perkins Institute, Samuel Gridley Howe, with whom she was in love; his wife, the glamorous Julia Ward Howe, a renowned writer, abolitionist, and suffragist; Laura's beloved teacher, who married a missionary and died insane from syphilis; an Irish orphan with whom Laura had a tumultuous affair; Annie Sullivan; and even the young Helen Keller.

    Deeply enthralling and rich with lyricism, WHAT IS VISIBLE chronicles the breathtaking experiment that Laura Bridgman embodied and its links to the great social, philosophical, theological, and educational changes rocking Victorian America. Given Laura's worldwide fame in the nineteenth century, it is astonishing that she has been virtually erased from history. WHAT IS VISIBLE will set the record straight.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateJun 3, 2014
    ISBN9781619698277
    Unavailable
    What Is Visible: A Novel

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    Reviews for What Is Visible

    4/5

    137 ratings16 reviews

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    • 5/5
      EXQUISITE!
      I did love this audiobook! Beautifully written and, although labeled as a novel, it is at least somewhat a semi autobiographical account of Laura Bridgeman, the obscure young woman who predated the most famous Helen Keller. What a story! Very captivating with great depth of feeling. Emotionally lush. Great, great, great narration! I am usually too generous with my stars when rating a book. However, in this case, I seem to have run out of them...☺️
    • 5/5
      A moving entrance to the irrepressible world of the foremost US deaf-blind pupil of the mid nineteenth century. Riveting.
    • 5/5
      Very engaging and read very well. I'm glad I listened through to the very end to hear the backstory. Definitely worth the time.
    • 3/5
      The fictional sexuality added was too much for my taste. I get the author's intention for adding it but it was way more than just hinted to. It was graphically detailed. Ruined an otherwise creative approach to historical fiction..
    • 5/5
      Beautiful. I did not want to to let Laura go and cried as she departed.
    • 5/5
      One of the best books I've read in recent years. I am so glad to hear of Laura Bridgeman and those who worked with her. Kimberly Elkins brings Laura to life. She makes Laura so interesting that I want to research her and the Perkins Institute. This novel held my attention not only with Laura but with the historical events that occur during her lifetime. A thoroughly entertaining educational book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      The one thing that made me finish this book was to find out why it has outstanding reviews. Just finished it and it didn’t get any better or help me understand the glowing reviews.
      It had one saving grace and that was it did introduce me to a historical person that I had no previous knowledge of. However, most of this book was about her need to be touched and how she goes about meeting that need. Since a lot of that need is met by a fictional character it seems that the author inserted herself too much into a historical figure’s mind and met some desire of her own through the main character.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Hm. I'm not much for historical fiction, but this seemed very well done. Good author's note. Engaging. Reminds me a lot of Tracy Chevalier's books in tone and re' the focus on sexuality. Not too high a yuck factor - Laura actually had a better life than many women of the time, and, in fact, it's possible she would have had a worse life if she'd grown up with her senses, with her family, and then married some random lout. But that's not the point... the point is that Elkins believes (with good reason) that Laura had a rich and interesting inner life, and that it's good for readers to realize that.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This is the story of Laura Bridgman, born December 21, 1829, died May 24, 1889, from a Streptococcal infection. She had only one sense that she could use and that was touch. This disastrous loss of her senses was brought about by a bout of Scarlet Fever when she was just two years old. Up until that time, she was a happy, normal child with all her faculties. Without sight, hearing, speech, smell or taste, she was virtually imprisoned in her own body and completely dependent on others for her care and well-being. The book takes up Laura’s life when she is the tender age of seven. In 1936, Dr. Samuel Howe takes her to his Perkins School for the Blind where she remained, except for brief visits home, for the rest of her life. The tale tracks her experiences, covering the history of the times through the Civil War, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the women’s suffrage movement. Although many of the characters are real, her Irish lover, Kate, was not. I am not quite sure why the author chose to make her a lesbian when there is no proof of that fact, and to my mind, it is more likely that she was only able to get affection from the girls around her because she rarely came into contact with members of the opposite sex, so what other choice would she have had. Since touch was her only sense, anyone who would have gratified her would have sufficed, I believe. In reality, it is not known if she ever had any kind of intimate relationship with anyone.Laura believed she was like a daughter to Dr. Howe and she grew overly attached to him. He was involved with, and controlled every aspect of her life. He was a Phrenologist who was invested in the belief that the bumps on the head could indicate the character of a person. He made many important decisions based on the condition and shape of a person’s head, including Laura’s and his wife, Julia’s. He was also a Unitarian and believed that if he curtailed Laura’s interest in G-d until he deemed fit, she would come by it naturally.She flourished intellectually, but emotionally she remained a bit undeveloped. He did not school her in subjects that would enable her to survive in the outside world as Helen Keller was eventually able to do, with her companion Anne Sullivan, always by her side. When he married Julia Ward, Laura become somewhat of a stepchild to him. She was no longer allowed to interact with him in the same way and was no longer allowed to live in the house with the family. If the book is accurate on this point, she was too much for Julia to deal with, and he acquiesced to her wishes. Although Julia had promised to give up her writing when she married, she eventually resumed and became a well known poet who wrote the lyrics for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. She was also a suffragette fighting for women’s rights. This did not please Dr. Howe. He believed a woman’s place was in the home, and furthermore, he did not care for it when others became more well-known than he was, for he wanted the limelight for himself. He probably kept Laura on a tight leash for that very same reason, although he hauled her out like a curiosity to entertain those interested in his school. It was, however, due to him that she became very famous in her own right for her remarkable achievements. She was the first deaf and blind girl to be educated. For that accomplishment, she owes Dr. Howe a debt of gratitude as do many others who attended his school and who still attend its classes today. He was the father of the education of these challenged children. A blind Laura Doll was created in her image and honor. She was famous and the toy was, as well.Laura Bridgman was not known to me before I read this book, although she was quite famous in her time. She was extremely intelligent but was kept in the shadows by Dr. Howe so that he could control her life. He did not believe in over stimulating her in any way, even when it came to her food, eliminating spices and sugar. Early in her school experience, along with her teacher, she had a companion, Sara White, with whom she was very close. Because she was not allowed a constant companion as she grew older, she was not able to do as much as the famed Helen Keller, of whom most of us have heard. Laura was overprotected when it came to the social world and her knowledge of what existed outside her community was limited. She traveled little and learned little of the workings of the world. I did learn a lot about her from the book, but I also learned a lot that wasn’t about her, that was made up out of whole cloth. Laura was presented as a difficult, stubborn, young woman, overly attached to a difficult, opinionated Dr. Howe, who could be a rigid and challenging man. He treated women as property and believed women should obey their husbands. He was sometimes unkind to his wife and often cold to Laura. I wondered if this man, who did so much for these disabled children at his school, could have been quite as cold and often as cruel, as he was depicted by the author.The world viewed people like Laura as developmentally arrested and enfeebled, yet she was neither, although there were times her moods were dark and she was despondent because of loneliness and rejection. She was a bright young woman who wanted the same things out of life as those with normal sight, hearing and speech. I think I would have liked the book better if it was shorter but stuck more to the facts rather than the fiction. However, the prose was a pleasure to read.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Historical Fiction account of the life of Laura Bridgeman. The book is an excellent presentation of fact without any changes, only some believably possible additions. All the characters were alive and well drawn. An excellent book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Kimberly Elkins seems to dislike Samuel Howe as much as Reza Aslan dislikes Paul. It's hard to know how much of this is true. She seems to have done a great deal of research from which she presents Howe as the sort of man who created, in his own image, the patriarchal god who insists on adoration and obedience. He was evidently lauded by his contemporaries as the man who created, in the Perkins institute, a place where blind children could be taught to trust themselves and to be unafraid of life. But in his education of Laura Bridgeman from the age of seven onward his sole purpose seems to have been to promote his own glory. Laura lost sight, hearing, taste and smell due to a fever disease at the age of two. He took on what the world might have thought an ineducable child and decided she was his tabula rosa on which he could produce whatever sort of human he desired. Apparently throughout her life her desires were of absolutely no interest to him. As a matter of fact, Elkins shows Howe to be a man for whom the interests of any woman were of no interest. They were all created just to adore him and make his life comfortable. I would say that he also thought a woman's place was merely to be an incubator of children, but he never gave one instance of thought to Laura's desire to be a whole person who could share her life with another person and possibly have children of her own. Laura was his show pony. His wife, the celebrated Julia Ward Howe, was to be a mother to his children and he felt her celebrity detracted from her humanity (as he defined a woman's humanity as help meet).So, on the one hand Elkins devotes the book to an expose of Howe's narcissism, but he also shows a bit of the narcissism of others. Laura is very proud of herself and her intellectual accomplishments, as she well should have been. She is also quite dismissive of those she finds intellectually or socially inferior to her. Residing in her dark silent world, especially after her beloved Whitey is dismissed from the institute and no other companion is found for her she has a great deal of time to think about herself, life, and religion. While Howe wanted her to think there was no god but Howe, she had the audacity to try out christianity and try to develop another way of seeing her place in the world. It's surprising that a woman so celebrated in her time could have been so forgotten. Elkins did a great job of bringing Laura Bridgeman to life and while she was at it, in shining light on 19th century America politics and literature.
    • 5/5
      FANTASTIC NOVEL BASED ON REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE AND EVENTS. YOU'LL FALL IN LOVE WITH LAURA BRIDGMAN, THE FIRST DEAFBLIND PERSON TO LEARN LANGUAGE, BEFORE HELEN KELLER. LAURA ALSO LOST HER SENSES OF TASTE AND SMELL TO SCARLET FEVER AT AGE TWO. BUT THIS ISN'T A SAD BOOK; IT'S WILDLY INSPIRATIONAL, AND AT TIMES, FUNNY AND EVEN SEXY AND ROMANTIC. IT SPANS 1840-1890 AND INCLUDES MANY FAMOUS FIGURES, INCLUDING DICKENS AND LONGFELLOW. IF YOU LOVED "LOVING FRANK," FOR INSTANCE, YOU'LL LOVE THIS BOOK. I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO GET AN ADVANCE COPY!
    • 5/5
      At the age of two, scarlet fever steals all but Laura Bridgman’s sense of touch. At seven, she is taken to the Perkins Institute, where she is placed under the direct care of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and is taught to read, write and sign. Before long, news of Laura’s miraculous abilities spreads, making her one of the most famous women of the nineteenth century. But alone in her thoughts, Laura questions herself, the role of god and her possibilities for the future.

      From her meeting with Helen Keller in the first pages back to her childhood with Dickens and Dorthea Dix, What Is Visible is peppered with a historical who’s who. But despite her famous visitors, the novel’s most compelling character is Laura Bridgman herself. Feisty, whip-smart and witty, Laura alternates between moments of unfailing self-confidence and harrowing self-pity as she watches the world evolve around her. Elkins crawls into Laura’s mind while also digging deep into the issues that impacted those at the Perkins Institute and in the country as a whole.

      Continue reading at River City Reading.
    • 5/5
      I admit it. In historical fiction, I read the afterwords first to get a sense of how much research an author has put into her subject. It’s clear that Elkins has done a lot of research, including the reading of a diary of the husband of of Laura Bridgeman’s favorite nurse. Elkins has been able to create a story told in first person from the perspective of the first deaf-blind woman who successfully learned to communicate. This perspective of living in a world with no sight, hearing, taste or smell is an imprisoned environment. And as Laura is paraded out as a success for Dr. Howe, the administrator of Perkins Institution, others find that touch at times scary as Laura explores their hair and eyes. One of the things I enjoy most about this book is Laura’s sexual development is not ignored. No one shares the meaning of puberty other than it means she is an adult woman. Elkins imagines her turning to the other blind girls at night for comfort. Her relationship (fictional) with a woman hired to take care of Laura shows that you can lose your senses but you don’t lose your need for affection and love. Dr. Howe's wife, Juliet Ward Howe, writer, suffragette, and abolitionist, is also well developed. And as for that egotistical Dr. Howe with his intimate relationship with Charles Sumner, its clear that life was dampened for all women.
    • 4/5
      Wow! This book was simultaneously devastating and fascinating for me. Overall, I found it to be a downer, a huge one. I had hoped I’d see Laura’s life as one well worth living and uplifting, and that I’d find strength and inspiration there, despite her extreme sensory deprivation (she’d lost 4 senses, all but touch) but I didn’t, not as much as I’d have liked anyway. I found the book and Laura’s life very depressing, but I also found myself laughing a lot. Thank goodness for humor.It didn’t help that I didn’t like these people. I did love Asa (though I might not have in real life) and at least some of these people were abolitionists which helped me dislike them a lot less, that and the simple fact of life’s difficulties helped me feel empathy for them, especially Laura, but most of them. What a world they were all trapped in. I guess I had the most problems with Doctor and Laura’s father, but really while I could sort of understand everyone, it was hard for me to like them. Given that, it’s amazing how much I enjoyed the book.I found it interesting to see miscommunications magnified even more than usual, due to Laura’s limitations and isolation, severe even in the best of times, which was sometimes funny and often tragic.At first I was disappointed when I found that every chapter wouldn’t be in Laura’s voice, and I’d assumed I’d be most interested in the young Laura, but it turned out I was able to get engaged with everyone’s voices and with Laura throughout her lifetime.I enjoyed the Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller short portions. I’d been interested in Laura perhaps because of my longstanding interest in Helen and Annie.I don’t know if this is good or bad, but I kept reading this as non-fiction, but it’s a novel. I think I might have to read a biography of her, with a lot of “in her own words.” I’m really grateful that at the end of the book the author cleared up some things about what was fictionalized and what actually happened.I came away really enjoying the book but feeling horrified and sad about Laura’s life, and others’ lives too. It wasn’t only Laura’s sensory deprivation, though that was most of it, but the heartbreaking ways in which she was treated, educated, and how clear communication was gravely impacted, and how helpless in the world she so often was, how dependent she was, by necessity. I could 100% forgive and understand Laura’s religiosity. The whole story was difficult to read, but hard to forget, and very enjoyable in its own way.I actually won this at GR First Reads but it came about a month after publication, which would have been fine if it was the hardcover edition I was expecting, but it was a very unattractive uncorrected proof edition, which would have been fine only if it had truly been an advance copy. So, I read a borrowed library edition, and didn’t touch the received uncorrected proof. I felt a bit blackmailed into reading the book. I wanted to read it, but with all the books on my to-read shelf, I’m not sure I’d have gotten to it, and doubt would have gotten to it as quickly as I did. I’m glad I did though so I can’t be that irked about how I came to read it now.
    • 4/5
      Took me a while to read this one, not because I did not like it but because I kept looking things up in Wiki. Most everyone has heard or read about Helen Keller, but I for one had never heard of Laura Bridgman. Her story, on fact, began fifty years before that of Kellers.She was left blind and mute following an illness when she was two yrs. Old, she was eight when she was sent to The Perkins School under the guidance of Samuel Howe. She is the first to learn English and the first to learn to communicate using finger writing. The author did a fabulous job portraying Laura, her fears and inner turmoil, her confusion over religion, her strength and her naiveté. She was an extraordinary woman, dealing with multiple handicaps. The character of Samuel was of course as a man of the times. The sun should only involve around him and he did everything he could to keep the woman in his life in line. I did not much like him, though I realize his character was not an uncommon one for this time period.Samuels wife was Julia Ward Howe, who was a poet and suffragist as well as an abolitionist. She was not allowed to publish under her name while married to Samuel. He would not allow it but of course she became famous in her own right. So many people passed through this book, so much history, John Brown, whom Laura thought mad, and the Harpers Ferry disaster. The assassination of Lincoln, The Civil War, The study of phrenology, and the debates about religion.The afterward explains exactly what was true and what was not. Annie Sullivan actually lived with Laura for several years and graduated from the Perkins school herself.Wonderful book, clearly stated prose, well rounded characters make this a very informative read. As is stated in the book, without Laura Bridgman there would have been no Helen Keller. ARC from publisher.