Sophia C. reviewed on 6/20/2009 + 289 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

I'm glad I read Jennifer Finney Boylan's account of life as a transsexual undergoing a male-to-female transition. A novelist and English professor at Colby College, Boylan writes with humor and eloquence. It is also an inspiring real-life lesson of how accepting a transgendered person's family and friends can be. Jenny is certainly a blessed person.

However, I was disappointingly less engaged than I hoped. Boylan writes about the events in her life without great insight into how she felt at that time. Her earlier life was sketched out in such a pointillistic style it is hard to connect the dots to how this amounted to a crushing identity crisis. (Not to say it did not exist.) Boylan's best friend, Richard Russo (author of Empire Falls), thought Jenny as the real Boylan was "implausible" because she played the role of James so well these pages do not offer much more of a glimpse at this behind-the-scenes inner self. I also think there was not much insight shared from the author's unique perspective of "being able to see into the worlds of both men and women with clear eyes." That said, I would still recommend the book as an uplifting story of how love and friendship prevail, even if it can not cure gender identity disorder as Jenny had hoped.

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