Actress and writer Shari Shattuck's Invisible Ellen 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, Mouse. Ellen is a product of the foster-care system, where she was either taunted or ignored due to a prominent scar on her face and a half-closed left eye. Her ego is bruised and she's shy about her physical deformities, so she develops evasive techniques to maintain anonymity and live a reclusive life. She quietly observes her struggling neighbors and coworkers--a troubled, pregnant woman and a drug dealer--from a careful distance.
But one afternoon, while Ellen is on her way to her cleaning job at Costco, a young, blind woman boards the bus and Ellen instinctively intervenes to save the stranger from being mugged. Ellen's once-manageable, invisible existence is suddenly upended. The blind woman, Temerity, takes an interest in Ellen and after more than six years of isolation, Ellen is faced with an offer of friendship--along with the motivation more fully to participate in life and courageously help others, regardless of complications.
Shattuck (The Man She Thought She Knew; Lethal) has written an upbeat, entertaining survival story about the souls of lost human beings often ignored by society. With her well-drawn characterizations and distinctive protagonists, she shows how lives can be profoundly transformed through unlikely human connections. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines