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Growing Up Haunted
by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Book Reviewed by: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.
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.
An unexpectedly graceful mix of ideas about ghosts, childhood, sexuality, gender, family, death, and the many ways one can be haunted...continued
Full Review
(431 words)
(Reviewed by Lucia Silva).
If you liked I'm Looking Through You, try these:
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
by Jeanette Winterson
Published 2013
Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded search for belonging, for love, identity, home, and a mother.
by William Fiennes
Published 2010
A bittersweet description of an ancient family house in an enchanted setting, and of growing up with a damaged brother.
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls
Jenny Boylan’s I’m Looking Through You ranks right up there with Mary
Karr’s The Liar’s Club and Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life as one
of the finest literary memoirs of the last several decades. Like these, it’s a
haunting revelation of the human heart, its terrible longings, its fears and
joys, the secret recesses where we most truly dwell. How alike we all are, down
this deep.
