I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir
by Jennifer Finney Boylan
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jennifer Finney BoylanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-10-21
ISBN: 0767921755
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir
Book Review: A Haunting Memoir
Summary: 5 Stars
Jennifer Finney Boylan in I'M LOOKING THROUGH YOU: GROWING UP HAUNTED, her second book to discuss her transformation from James to Jennifer, has much going for it. Since Ms. Boylan is a professor of English at Colby College and the author of several novels, we would expect that she is fluent in the language. And that she is. Her prose is as transparent and effortless as a stream in Maine, the state she and her family call home. Her wonderful sense of humor will grab you immediately. Case in point: "What am I doing here with a gin and tonic and a [...]?" At one point she opines that her sense of humor may have kept her sane in her anything-but-conventional life. The cast of characters is usually both entertaining and compelling; many of them surely could be subjects of short stories.
In a recent radio interview I heard Ms. Boyan, without whining, discussing the difficulties that she has faced in the world of the transgendered. While she dwells less on the topic in this memoir than in her previous book, SHE IS NOT THERE: A LIFE IN TWO GENDERS, she does rue the fact that she too often has to explain herself to and educate the gawking public about this world, something that a lot of us who are different from the great washed majority have long since become tired of doing.
What comes through on every page of this book is that Ms. Boylan is a remarkable woman and the most decent of people. I am convinced that I would like her on sight and would love to audit one of her English classes. She is far too kind to her sister Lydia (the book is dedicated to her sister) who has refused to ever see her again and demands that when she visits their mother that portraits of James/Jennifer must be removed from her mother's home and that Jennifer's name cannot be mentioned. Lydia needs to get over herself and/or stay in Scotland. Her mother should inform her that she does not remove photographs of anybody for her or anyone else.
Ms. Boylan says in the introduction that this book is a memoir. We'll just have to accept this-- at least recent ones-- as a new genre somewhere between fiction and non-fiction. She is obviously the godchild of Frank McCourt whom she refers to in the introduction-- who wrote dozens of pages of dialogue in ANGELA'S ASHES that supposedly took place while he was a child under the age of six, a feat that stretches credibility to say the least. This writer convinces us, however, that she has caught the essence of what happened to her. I for one, whether events happened exactly as she writes of them or not, would not have missed her account of the decorating of the Christmas tree with ornaments with each family member's names on them, as well as extended family and a special place on the tree for deceased pets known as the "Pet Cemetery."
This book should go a long way in convincing us that we are all in this together and we are more alike than different.
Summary of I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir
From the bestselling author of She?s Not There comes another buoyant, unforgettable memoir?I?m Looking Through You is about growing up in a haunted house...and making peace with the ghosts that dwell in our hearts.For Jennifer Boylan, creaking stairs, fleeting images in the mirror, and the remote whisper of human voices were everyday events in the Pennsylvania house in which she grew up in the 1970s. But these weren?t the only specters beneath the roof of the mansion known as the ?Coffin House.? Jenny herself?born James?lived in a haunted body, and both her mysterious, diffident father and her wild, unpredictable sister would soon become ghosts to Jenny as well.
I?m Looking Through You is an engagingly candid investigation of what it means to be ?haunted.? Looking back on the spirits who invaded her family home, Boylan launches a full investigation with the help of a group of earnest, if questionable, ghostbusters. Boylan also examines the ways we find connections between the people we once were and the people we become. With wit and eloquence, Boylan shows us how love, forgiveness, and humor help us find peace?with our ghosts, with our loved ones, and with the uncanny boundaries, real and imagined, between men and women.
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