Well-drawn characterizations and a
compelling opening launch Invisible
Ellen, a unique story of friendship by actress/writer Shari Shattuck. The book begins with an
intriguing description of Ellen Homes, a 24 year-old, 273 pound,
socially-awkward woman who shares a low-income, one-room apartment—and a
"love of caloric excess," namely in the form of bacon—with her cat
named Mouse. Ellen was once a product of the foster care system, where she was
either taunted or ignored due to a prominent scar on her face and her left eye,
halfway closed, which limits her vision. Ellen's background, along with her physical
deformity, encourages her to espouse evasive techniques of anonymity to
accommodate her limitations and cultivate her reclusiveness. But one afternoon,
a young, blind woman boards the same bus that Ellen takes to her job cleaning
at a Costco store, and Ellen instinctively intervenes to save the stranger from
being mugged. Ellen's once-manageable, invisible life—spent quietly observing,
from a distance, her struggling, also afflicted neighbors and co-workers,
namely a troubled, pregnant woman and a drug dealer—is suddenly upended by the
incident. In an ironic twist, the blind woman named Temerity takes an interest
in Ellen and after more than six years of isolation, offers Ellen
friendship—along with the motivation to more fully participate in life and courageously
help others, regardless of complications.
Shattuck
(Legacy)
has written an upbeat, entertaining survival story about the souls of lost
human beings often ignored by society and shows how lives can be profoundly
transformed through unlikely human connections.
Putnam Adult, $26.95 Hardcover, 9780399167614, 304 pp
Publication Date: May 29, 2014
Note: This review is a reprint and is being
posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/5/14),
click HERE