Rating: 
Summary: Well written but disappointing
Review: I really wanted to like this book but ultimately was unable. I've known many transgender people and none have witnessed the world travelling, money-no-issue lifestyle that Ms. Boylan has 'lived'.Sorry to say it but this reads more like a fictional fantasy than fact.
Rating: 
Summary: What is this book all about?
Review: I think that I would have liked James Boylan very much - a bright, articulate, witty and decent person (by his own account, admittedly). But Jennifer Boylan cannot for the life of her present herself or her cause in any way that elicits sympathy or understanding or even good will. "She's Not There" is a congratulatory and self absorbed memoir of a man becoming a woman, believing that s/he was born a female in a male body. She never makes the case convincingly, however, despite filling almost 300 pages. I simply do not understand what Boylan is trying to accomplish with this book. She doesn't seem to try to capture the hearts of her readers - say, by portraying the reality or the anguish of being transgendered and the absolute necessity, to her at least, of her actions. One could take this as a failure of her writing skills if she did not in the end simply shrug it all off as "a mystery". One is left then with the unpleasant conclusion that the author is an extraordinarily selfish person who loves the limelight and who is equally indifferent to the needs and desires of those who love her faithfully, and to the legitimate expectations of her readers.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Just Another Tell-All
Review: I was reluctant to read another tell-all by yet another transsexual. As a "trans" person and sociologist studying these issues, who has read a thousand books on the subject, the last thing I wanted to hear was another account of playing dress-up at age three and all the sordid details thereafter. Yet friends insisted, despite myself, that I read just the first chapter. I was hooked by the author's delicate, nuanced brushstrokes. The short story format and staggered chronology gave me the feeling of how this life had been interrupted and jerked around by the social forces of stigma and conformity. I felt intimately connected to the author and, ultimately, to my own life.
Rating: 
Summary: A good book on a complex subject
Review: I went into reading this book with more then a bit of skepticism, having seen other examples of transgender people telling their story fall short of what I have known and experienced (yep, I am a transgender M to F myself). Anyway I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Ms. Boylan writes with a grace and a style that made the book easily readable and one for me that I wanted to read, rather then had to read. Some people might criticize the relatively light tone she takes with some of the darker issues she had to face (like a disapproving sister) but after reading so many doom and gloom tales that over emphasize that side, this was a breath of fresh air. As someone like Ms. Boylan who is going through transition as a family (with some differences in terms of family dynamics) I can say that the emotions she writes about, her and of those around her, if lightened up, are real. Her spouse deals with this differently then many spouses would, for sure, but the pain and the hurt expressed is true in my experience. Likewise, the uncertainty of people around a transitioning person is portrayed very well here, especially in the relationship with her friend Richard Russo. I am glad that Jenny made the point that not only is the person transitioning, so are the people around them. I also would like to comment on some of the other reviews, who imply that Jenny "glossed over" the pain of her family, or implied she was some sort of typical middle age man just "doing his own thing". I suspect if she glossed over the raw emotions it was to protect her family and their privacy, not about trivializing them. As far as this being some sort of middle age crisis and a 'choice', forget it. As someone who is there, I can tell you it is no choice when someone transititions at this age (or later), by then it is do this or perish as a person. I recommend this book to all readers, no matter of who they are. It is well written, and I think it serves as a gentle and informative (though not complete) portrayal of a complex subject and of someone finally becoming themselves.
Rating: 
Summary: What's missing
Review: I would recommend that anyone interested in transexuals read this book. There aren't too many good books on this subject around. Some might be put off by Jennifer Boylan's humor when dealing with such a life/death issue of what its like to be a transsexual. But that humor, I'm sure, has helped James/Jennifer Boylan endure many a tough situation. She is to be congratulated for presenting her wife's (Grace Finney Boylan's) reaction in telling detail. The problem with this book is that Jennifer Boylan glosses over what and how she felt for 40 years living as a male but desperately wanting to live as a female. It is understandable that this would be very, very difficult to put down on paper. But by telling this part of the story only superficially, it is hard to understand (for anyone not a transsexual) why James Boylan went ahead with the hormones and the reassignment surgery despite the obvious hardship this would cause to his wife Grace, who loves him, and whom he loves.
At the beginning of "Part 4" of the book, there is a picture of Jennifer Boylan in her 40s. She is very pretty, quite feminine, very alive and intelligent. Most women would want to look so good. Extremely few male-to-female transsexuals look this good.
At the end of the previous part, we hear from Grace on how she feels "betrayed", "abandoned", "gypped", and no matter how much
she has been consulted, "it didn't really matter what I said about any of it, did it?"
The reader is overcome with admiration and sympathy for Grace Boylan when learning how lovingly and with great fortitude she deals with her husband's metamorphosis.
Best wishes to you both, Grace and Jennifer.
Rating:
Summary: Boylan speaks with her voice again!
Review: I've been reading Boylan for a couple of years now, well before I learned of her gender transition. Her work has always had that unique voice that lies between comedy and tragedy. When she speaks about her life, she does the same. Although she never really goes into the details of the rough, sorrow-filled moments of her life and transition, the feeling of them is still there. It takes a unique individual to laugh at their own pain but still acknowledge it. As yet another transsexual, I related a lot to this book, but in the end, it was Boylan's voice that make me love this work. For a brief time, she invites you on a tour of her life with her own running commentary. It's fun and hard, but that's what life is.
Rating:
Summary: How Fake Can Fake Be?
Review: If "She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders" was intended to demonstrate our common humanity, it fails. The book presents fungible people in featureless settings, speaking in a uniform language. The characters do not gain humanity by this sameness; they are robbed of it. Nor does the book explain transsexuality. I learned little about it that I hadn't already known, deduced, or surmised. One exception was a recital by Prof. Boylan's physician, Dr. Strange, of the stages of treatment leading up to a sex-change operation, but his lecture seemed canned. The book is not even very amusing. The incidents are too pointless to succeed as anecdotes, though, after a while, they begin to carry some conviction. Only real life could be so dull and meaningless. This perverse sort of conviction is reinforced by a thin and colorless style. The dialogue is a combination of vapid banter, fizzling comebacks and punchlines, and platitudes as shallow and insincere as a Hallmark card. Prof. Boylan's faddish words and slipshod colloquialisms invite mockery. Again and again, she uses a word or phrase so not-quite-right, that I wondered whether she might have intended these gaffes as a metaphor for her condition; but no twinkle in her eye justified the thought. A good example: "If word got out I was transgendered, I'd disappoint [sic] everyone who had put their faith in me." If the humor of that understatement wasn't unintended, then it's far too subtle for me. One nice touch: giving many of the characters unisex names and nicknames. Also amusing is Jenny's hint to her banker as to how she might secure a loan to pay for her sex-change operation. (I suppose the financing statement would have described the collateral as "equipment.") James/Jenny is not entirely without irony or wit: while visiting a Pennsylvania monkey "orphanage," he speculates that the mannish woman who greets him must be his strangely absent host's professional nurse, "hired to rub salve into his scars." In fact, the woman *is* his host, who, having undergone a sex-change operation, may well need to salve a scar or two. In the first chapter, Richard Russo, Jenny's friend and fellow author, gives a reading at Colby College to end his book tour promoting "Empire Falls." Jenny, continuing an amicable rivalry with Russo, introduces him to the audience as "the country's second best novelist." 200 pages later, Prof. Boylan mentions that Russo's book "did all right" by winning the Pulitzer Prize. Overall, the book seems like a casual after-dinner story: not believed when heard, and forgotten by the next morning. Nothing in it conveys the agony that James must have endured for forty years, or the relief that Jenny must now feel, having achieved womanhood and published it to a candid world. Jenny herself evinces little self-analysis. Surely, after wrestling with her misery and finally conquering it, she must have acquired more self-knowledge than she displays. In the end, the book left me skeptical that such a thing as transsexuality even exists.
Rating:
Summary: A Bittersweet Memoir, At Least For Me
Review: Jennifer Finney Boylan has written a tremendously moving and sometimes funny account of her transformation from male to female. (At one point she opines about taking speech lessons from a Hungarian voice specialist: "'Great,' I said. 'So I'll talk like a Hungarian woman.'")She is obviously a fine writer and reading her story is quite effortless. For me this is a bittersweet memoir because of all the anguish that Ms. Boylan's transformation causes, particularly for the wife Grace, who comes across as being terribly decent and loving. (I do not mean to imply that Boyland is not decent and loving, quite to the contrary.) Grace expresses her feelings about all that is going on very poignantly: "You asked me if I thought this was necessary, and yes, I do. I think it's taken incredible bravery and courage for you to be the person you need to be, and I'm not going to stand in the way of that. I would never keep the person I love from being who she needs to be. But I can't be glad for you, Jenny. Every success you've had a a woman is also a loss for me." Both Jennifer and Grace are brutally honest in how they feel; at times I found their honesty almost too painful to read. But shouldn't everyone have a friend like Richard Russo! What a supportive and thoroughly caring person he is. Boylan's best friend, he writes a warm and loving afterward to this story.
Rating:
Summary: She's All There, and More Power to Her
Review: Jennifer Finney Boylan presents her story with courage, humor, and intelligence. Many autobiographies of transsexuals end up being read mostly by other transsexuals and transgendered people, but this one is a good story and entertaining--not to mention informative--for everyone. Boylan is such a wonderful writer that one can not help but be carried away by her story. I found this book hard to put down. And, be sure not to skip the afterward by Richard Russo, which brought tears to my eyes.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and entertaining!
Review: Jennifer Finney Boylan's book offers a look into the true story of the life of a transgendered person. In it she recounts her struggles to be male, all the while feeling inherently female in the wrong body. As a mismatched mind and body, the author gives the reader a sense of the confusion that results, that is, until the day James realizes that, he would be happier if he became a woman. From childhood through adulthood, including marriage as a man to a woman and fatherhood, Ms. Boylan takes the reader through the process of hormone therapy and surgery to become Jennifer, all the while gently and lovingly working through the bumps of taking longstanding relationships along for the ride. Boylan presents her life story with sensitivity, warmth and humor making it a very good read. I recommend this book for its entertainment value and the opportunity it presents to educate the reader about this little known condition.
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