Sight

Jessie Greengrass John Murray €20.99 Pregnant with her second child, a woman recounts her doubt-filled journey into motherhood, looking back on her own mother’s early death and childhood summers spent with her psychoanalyst grandmother. Personal ruminations are spliced with vivid snapshots of key moments in medical history, including X-ray pioneer Wilhelm Rontgen’s image of his wife’s hand and Sigmund Freud’s work with his daughter Anna. The novel’s message seems to be that the search for enlightenment is an end in itself. There’s scant plot and its memoir-like tone can feel disorientating, but Greengrass’s fiercely cerebral despatch from one of life’s most extraordinary rites of passage impresses linguistically, intellectually and emotionally. Hephzibah Anderson