The Art of Seeing: A Novel

A surprising novel of sisterhood, The Art of Seeing hinges on the twin cataclysms of fame and disability. Jemma is the half-adoring, half-resentful younger sister of Rozzie, a difficult girl with a flair for the dramatic, who startles her family by becoming a movie actress and minor celebrity while still in high school. Everywhere Jemma can go in life, it seems that Rozzie has already been there. That Rozzie has been concealing severe problems with her vision and will eventually be plunged into blindness while on a movie set seems to promise only a reversal of roles, with Jemma becoming the stronger and more capable sister: the sister with a future. This is the classic stuff of sibling relations and the reason that the first half of Cammie McGovern's novel, however well-crafted, is somewhat predictable. But readers who stay the course will be rewarded by the ever-more-intricate spirals of the second half of this thoughtful debut, which calls to mind the close-focus writing of Amy Bloom. The author, incidentally, is the younger sister of actress Elizabeth McGovern, which may have helped in her deft, undazzled depiction of the movie world. --Regina Marler