Response to Things Not Seen

I think this is a book that can bring about any number of responses on the part of the reader. I can see people loving this book and I can see people hating it, and everything in between. For me, it was very up and down. I started off liking it okay, then I didn’t like it, then I really did, then something would happen I thought was stupid, then I would love how it got resolved, and over and over until I was done. It was a very up-and-down experience.
My first thought when I saw what the book was about was, “What is this, a new version of ‘The Metamorphosis’?” and I was not really looking forward to that. Luckily, it didn’t turn out that way. After I started reading about Bobby’s first morning as being invisible, there were multiple things that I was questioning. First was Bobby’s reaction. He’s fifteen, he’s a boy, and I’m supposed to believe that the first thing to pop into his head wasn’t, “How can I use this to my advantage?” Just about every fifteen-year-old boy I know would absolutely have gone to the dressing rooms in a women’s store or started playing tricks on all the people he doesn’t like, and all kinds of stuff like that. So I was skeptical about that, but then Bobby addresses it when he says that’s exactly what his friends would tell him to do. He goes on to say, “…if that’s what some kid is thinking, that’s because it’s not happening to him…This isn’t like that. This is my life” (67). I had two reactions to this. First, I was really glad the author addressed it, and it totally made sense the way Bobby said it. I had never thought of it like that. Like it’s not some game, it’s a completely life-changing experience. Still, my second reaction was that I could see a kid coming to that realization…after a few days. I still think the immediate reaction would be to wreak some havoc and steal some money or something, and after the luster has worn off then maybe we’d see the reaction that Bobby has.
The topic of invisibility is really difficult to explain, because I think there are too many problems that make it unbelievable. I tried to suspend disbelief, and I was actually really glad that there was a real explanation as to why it happened, not just, “He woke up and he was invisible, deal with it.” This is where I was able to suspend disbelief because I thought the whole electric blanket/solar wind thing was pretty far-fetched, but I was okay with it. I was even able to buy into it when he first saw his shadow and they realize that there is just something up with his molecular structure that doesn’t allow light to refract off of him properly, so the eye doesn’t pick him up. I actually thought that was really interesting and clever. But I could not buy into the fact that Bobby could “hide” things in his hands or armpits. That doesn’t make any sense. If you can’t see the item, then there has to be something blocking it. And hiding something in your armpit is not at all different than holding your hand in front of it. If nobody can see the thing in his hand, then his hand is covering it. Logically, then, you can’t see something his body is blocking, in which case he is not invisible! I couldn’t get over that.
Finally, the ending of the book was really anticlimactic and disappointing. If I had realized that sleeping under an electric blanket made me invisible, you know the first thing I do? Go sleep under the blanket again! I understand that you don’t know what’s going to happen, but I would be willing to try anything. I can’t believe it took that long to come up. I was a bit disappointed in that part of the ending, but was intrigued by Sheila, who didn’t want to go back to normal. When she says, “I don’t want to start worrying about my weight and my hair and all that junk again” (238) I think that’s an outstanding little commentary by the author on the vanity of people. Perhaps it would be better if everyone was invisible, because then we wouldn’t even have to worry about how people look.