Rating: 
Summary: Good then, good now
Review: Jenny Boylan's writing is some of the funniest and most insightful stuff around, never fails to cheer me up when I'm having a down day, even if the topic is serious. Her novels are quite good, but I prefer her true life stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Really good one
Review: Just in case you aren't prepared for it, this is a book about the transgender experience. But, as searingly personal as such a nonfiction topic must, by definition be, it is strangely distancing in its manner of telling. Jenny Boylan lived for 40 yrs as James Boylan, an author (fiction) and college professor. It's been 5 yrs since she became female.
It's not the facts that are 'off' in this book; it's the tone. It's too breezy and leaves me with the feeling that a lot of the psychic pain and emotional valleys have been omitted.
But still, it's good. Consider, for a more literary approach and a truly amazing story, reading Conundrum by Jan Morris.
Rating:
Summary: Brave journey
Review: The book chronicles the life of English professor, Jenny Boylan, and her journey to become the woman that she had always known herself to be. Boylan tells a very poignant story about identity, love, and the courage to be yourself. Her book and its information are sure to help many people; as well as provide a wonderful learning and reading experience. Very engaging narrative, and a wonderfully brave story. Thank you, Jenny, for writing this book.
Rating:
Summary: She's Mostly There
Review: The episodic nature of "She's Not There" makes particular anecdotes stand out for me. First is James sitting under his mother's ironing board, as she tells him that he will someday wear shirts like those she is ironing for his father. This is a fact he cannot relate to at all, as he expects to dress like she does. He is three years old, and already the split between body identity and his mind identity is fixed. It is forty years before this dichotomy is resolved by the surgery that truly turns James into Jenny. But a lot happens before this final resolution. Because Broylan is a comic writer, the surface of the story can seem trivialized. But tragedy lies just under the surface in many ways. Jenny grieves constantly over what her need to be a whole person necessarily does to Grace, whom she truly loves. Grace, the strong one in the marriage, must go from rage and impotence to some form of acceptance. And the book was written so soon after the surgery that one wonders how their relationship, beyond the parental role they are so clearly committed to, will turn out. In some ways, I'd have preferred that Jenny wait five years to write the book, to live into her new identity for a longer period of time.
I think it is also important that Jenny is for the most part so well accepted in her new body and role. She is honest in portraying Russo's struggle, but in the long run, Russo and his wife are there. Her colleagues at Colby are incredibly supportive. Her mother loves her no matter what. It pains her that her sister writes her off, but she seems to be the major important person to do so. I also thought it important, however, that this acceptance was balanced by Trudy, who was so rejected that she committed suicide, and Melanie, who so lacked support that she had no one and would have died after her surgery had it not been for Russo and Grace. This provided a balance to what Jenny admited was the cockeyed optimism she had inherited from her mother. Being transexual is hard. It was hard for Jenny, and a lot harder for a lot of other people. This book both helped me see how hard, and gave me a window into why some people absolutely have to do something about the dichotomy in their gender identity. Not a perfect book, but an important one.
Rating:
Summary: Personal and Thoughtful
Review: The review on the back cover promises a transformation of our conceptions of "love, marriage, and friendship." We get all that and more. We are allowed to see honest, soul-searching criticism of Jennifer Boylan's gender transition from her best male friend. Although we don't get that much from her wife, who mainly sits around and cries in this book, we do learn a lot about a tenacious marriage that is thoroughly committed to family. Boylan has unique insights into transsexuality. She talks about how male-to-female transsexuals, including herself, often behave like preteen girls when they begin transitioning, and how, for this reason, they're accused of not being "real women." But she has rebuttals: people always resent those to whom the world feels new and exciting, and transgendered people are under more intense and unforgiving scrutiny for their human flaws. There was a fascinating discussion, the likes of which I've never seen before, written from the perspective of the two novelists, Boylan and Russo. They said it doesn't matter if a story is actually real. What matters is how it's told. A poorly told story can seem implausible despite its actual veracity. Likewise, transsexuals may feel that their chosen gender is "real," but may actually have been more talented at acting their birth gender role. People will feel uncomfortable around them because their presentation doesn't seem authentic. It's the gender presentation that other people respond to, not the transsexual's alleged "true" feelings. But Boylan's philosophy is interjected judiciously; this is more memoir than theory. And excellent memoir at that. She's an English professor who plays in a band, picks up hitchhikers, and referees small children in magic shops. She's also, with the publication of this personal story, made a major contribution for transsexuals and the people who love them. Worth a thorough read.
Rating:
Summary: Personal and Thoughtful
Review: The review on the back cover promises a transformation of our conceptions of "love, marriage, and friendship." We get all that and more. We are allowed to see honest, soul-searching criticism of Jennifer Boylan's gender transition from her best male friend. Although we don't get that much from her wife, who mainly sits around and cries in this book, we do learn a lot about a tenacious marriage that is thoroughly committed to family. Boylan has unique insights into transsexuality. She talks about how male-to-female transsexuals, including herself, often behave like preteen girls when they begin transitioning, and how, for this reason, they're accused of not being "real women." But she has rebuttals: people always resent those to whom the world feels new and exciting, and transgendered people are under more intense and unforgiving scrutiny for their human flaws. There was a fascinating discussion, the likes of which I've never seen before, written from the perspective of the two novelists, Boylan and Russo. They said it doesn't matter if a story is actually real. What matters is how it's told. A poorly told story can seem implausible despite its actual veracity. Likewise, transsexuals may feel that their chosen gender is "real," but may actually have been more talented at acting their birth gender role. People will feel uncomfortable around them because their presentation doesn't seem authentic. It's the gender presentation that other people respond to, not the transsexual's alleged "true" feelings. But Boylan's philosophy is interjected judiciously; this is more memoir than theory. And excellent memoir at that. She's an English professor who plays in a band, picks up hitchhikers, and referees small children in magic shops. She's also, with the publication of this personal story, made a major contribution for transsexuals and the people who love them. Worth a thorough read.
Rating:
Summary: Loving Each Other Through The Biggest of Changes
Review: There have been several books over the past few years detailing the author's change from a man into a woman. Such a changes aren't rare anymore; there are psychological and surgical protocols that have become standards because the change is so often sought. Naturally, there is more to it than just a swap of genitalia, and it affects friends and family. Sometimes the effects are disastrous, even if the one who has changed is still glad to have made the change, and sometimes most of the people involved adapt remarkably well. The latter is the fortunate result Jennifer Finney Brown writes about in _She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders_ (Broadway Books), and so she can write comically about many of the episodes having to do with the change. Boylan is a comic novelist, and an English professor, and so she brightly writes about the absurdities involved in her situation. There is also plenty of heartfelt seriousness here, though it often takes the pleasant form of frank gratitude to her best friend and her wife. The former James Boylan knew he was a she for as long as he knew anything about such roles. He grew up thinking love was going to cure him, and he did fall in love, very happily. "Here at last we shall leave all of this and move onward with this new life, finally, miraculously, _healed_." He married, had two sons, and had his successful academic career. But he was not healed. At age forty, he determined that he would began his transition into a body that would match his inner gender. His wife, Grace, could not understand it; she accepted initially some of his cross-dressing (always remember, those who cross-dress are not necessarily those who feel they are in the wrong sex, nor is either category to be confused with homosexuality), but quite logically, she grieved for the prospective loss of the man she loved. Faced with his desire to make a biological change, Grace turns out to be a real heroine, and Boylan knows it; Boylan's love for her throughout the book is obvious. He was as open as he could be with his sons, assuring them that the change reflected no change in his love for them, and that such a change was rare and was not what they themselves were in for. In may ways, the change was hardest for his best friend, the novelist Rick Russo, who puts a moving afterword to the book, a tribute to their friendship, and a meditation on just how badly changes can go if you don't have friends around to help. Eventually, Boylan, with Grace and Russo, goes to a surgeon who is one of the best in the business. After all, Boylan joked to Russo, "If you're in the market for new genitalia, you really don't want to shop in the bargain basement." Dr. Schrang promised as a goal that he would make her "sensate, mucosal and orgasmic," and the surgery seems to have managed all three. The three friends got through it. Boylan and Grace are still married, and still want to be, although one of the curiosities of the situation is that if now they wished to marry, they could not. There are times in this comic memoir, full of irony and gender puzzles, when the value of friendship shines brilliantly through in a deeply moving way. Let me give the last word to Grace, whom Boylan hears on the phone, telling someone, "Whatever else you say about my husband, she's a remarkable woman."
Rating: 
Summary: strangly impersonal
Review: There is something wrong with this account of Finney Boylan's experience of going from not even able to admit his secret to biologically becoming a woman. Maybe because s/he's a Professional Writer s/he can hardly let such a rare life experience go unexamined, unwritten about, s/he has written a book about a deeply personal life experience in the most superficial way possible. It's quite banal, and as a result, boring. The correspondence between Richard Russo and Finney is transcribed, almost as if to show just how clever the emails between Professional Writers can be, and maybe holds the ulterior motive of pulling in fans of the far more successful Russo. This book seems very calculated, as if maybe this is an effort towards a Pulitzer like Russo's and of which Boylan is so transparently evious.
Rating:
Summary: A funny, sad, engaging story-- READ IT!
Review: This book gripped me from the moment I opened it. I read it in under 24 hours. Boylan is witty and clever, and there are many passages where I was unsure if I should laugh or cry. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever believed in the redemptive power of love. Jenny- you go girl!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for those who are learning...
Review: This book is excellent for those who are learning a number of things. Forinstance, it's an excellent starting point for those interested in transgender issues in society. It isn't only that though. It does make one look inside him/herself & find what made them the person that they are...what impacts or influences created the being he/she has become. Jennifer does an incredible job of letting the reader tag along on her journey of finding one's self. At times, the book does seem to have a "rose-colored glasses" view of the struggle one faces, but overall, an amazing account.
|
