I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Jennifer Finney Boylan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2008

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Boylan, an English professor, novelist and memoirist (She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders), tells of growing up in a haunted house in Pennsylvania, where phantom footfalls and spectral mists were practically commonplace. This was a fitting-enough setting for young Boylan, then a boy who longed to become a girl. Back then I knew very little for certain about whatever it was that afflicted me, she writes. [I]n order to survive, I'd have to become something like a ghost myself, and keep the nature of my true self hidden. In 2006, years after her sex change, Boylan returned to her childhood home with a band of local ghostbusters as she struggled to reconcile with her past as James Boylan, as well as her memories of family members she'd loved and lost there. This memoir is better suited for those interested in broader human truths than in fact (a disclaimer in the author's note explains that she's taken liberties in service of the story); readers in the former category are in for a treat. Boylan writes with a measured comedic timing and a light touch, affecting a pitch-perfect balance between sorrow, skepticism and humor. In spite of the singularity of Boylan's circumstance, the coming-of-age story has far-reaching resonance: estrangement in one's own home, alienation in one's own skin and the curious ways that men and women come to know themselves and one another. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Boylan's follow-up to She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders (Broadway, 2003) is a richly portrayed-and often laugh-out-loud funny-memoir of her youth. The author was a teen in the 1970s, living in a quaint old house in Philadelphia's Main Line. Her family, home, and boyhood share equally in this tale. Until a decade ago, Boylan was male, but as a youth she was coming to terms with the fact that she longed to have a body that matched her feminine identity. Instead, she was named Jim, escaped some social awkwardness by playing piano to the thrill of almost any crowd, and adored her older sister Lydia, the only character here who, years later, can't accept the departure of Jim for the arrival of Jennifer. Combining incisive memories of events as they may or may not have happened with compelling emotions that must be true, Boylan takes readers through family losses (the death of Lydia's horse), mysteries (the footsteps overheard in the old house's attic), comedies (finding himself trapped in that same attic in his sister's wedding dress), embarrassments (his drunk and irrepressible grandmother on the eve of Lydia's wedding), and thoughtful excursions (the responses of Jim's spouse and children to his transgendering). Teens who dote on family stories, as well as those who wonder what life might be like if you could change and still look back at what you had been with a large degree of comfort, will find much to delight in here.—Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1ST edition (January 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767921747
• ISBN-13: 978-0767921749
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #965,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jenny Boylan is the author of ten books, including the brand-new I'M LOOKING THROUGH YOU, a memoir about growing up in a haunted house, as well as a reflection on the nature of "being haunted." Her 2003 memoir, SHE'S NOT THERE was one of the first bestselling works by a transgender American. A three-time guest of the Oprah Winfrey program, she has twice appeared on Larry King Live as well as on the Today Show. She has been the subject of a documentary on CBS News' 48 Hours, and in the spring of 2007, Jenny played herself on several episodes of ABC's All My Children. She has been parodied with eerie accuracy by Will Forte on "Saturday Night Live." Since 1988, Jenny has been a professor of English at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boylan's story is at once singular and familiar --- the right combination for a successful memoir, January 22, 2008

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir (Hardcover)

A quick glance of Jennifer Finney Boylan's latest memoir, I'M LOOKING THROUGH YOU, would give the impression that the book focuses on growing up in a haunted house. But a closer look reveals, as the subtitle states, that it is about "growing up haunted." This is an important distinction.

Boylan did live for many years in a house, aptly named the "Coffin House" after the family who built it, that she took to be haunted. Her family moved there in 1972, just as she was entering her teenage years. On her first visit she received a big electrical shock, followed by another surprise: she was to sleep in a spooky third floor bedroom while the rest of her family would get their shut-eye on the floor below. From that first day exploring her new home, Boylan felt the presence of ghosts, and her nights there were full of disembodied footsteps and floating specters. As her story unfolds, it becomes more complex and nuanced. She moves readers back and forth in time, telling stories of the Coffin House, her adventures with "ghostbusters" later in life, and, most especially, her personal hauntings.

As she wrote in her earlier bestselling memoir, SHE'S NOT THERE, Boylan was born "James" but always knew herself to be "Jenny." It wasn't until after she was grown, a college English professor married with two sons of her own, that she came out as transgendered and began the process of becoming a woman physically. Her time in the Coffin House coincided with her teenage years, and she relates her frustration and uncertainty with honesty and grace. "Back then," she writes, "I knew very little for certain about whatever it was that afflicted me, but I did know this much: that in order to survive, I'd have to become something like a ghost myself, and keep the nature of my true self hidden." In fact, later, returning to the house as an adult woman, after the place had been remodeled and filled with the laughter of the next generation, she wonders if she had indeed haunted herself. Was the starry-eyed woman she saw, as a teenage boy, over her shoulder in the mirror really her future self still trapped and lonely in the male body?

There are other figures who haunt this tale as well. Boylan mourns the loss of her father and older sister, neither of whom get to know her as Jenny. Her family factors large in this memoir, of course. They are an eccentric Irish bunch: a crass and loving grandmother and her refined English sidekick, a perpetually cold aunt, a mystical cousin and others support the story of the immediate Boylan clan, including Jenny's smart older sister, musical father, and religious and accepting mother.

In the post-Frey era, memoirs are read with a critical eye. Like many others today, I'M LOOKING THROUGH YOU is prefaced with the disclaimer that there are elements of invention in the book, including some of the dialogue, and that she played a bit with the timeline. For readers of memoirs this may seem obvious (for who can remember the exact words of a conversation 30 years ago?), but it frees the author and allows her a creativity that only strengthens the story she is trying to tell. And Boylan's style is creative --- light-handed and readable, funny and wise, conversational and intimate, and yet polished.

Sprinkled with philosophy, without sounding snobby, and pop-culture references without being silly, I'M LOOKING THROUGH YOU is an enjoyable and memorable read. Boylan's story is at once singular and familiar --- the right combination for a successful memoir. While the Coffin House provides the bones of the book, it is lovingly fleshed out, with a personal, often bittersweet examination of family, loss, identity and change.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Far more hearts are haunted than houses", August 25, 2008

By 

Linda Bulger (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir (Hardcover)

At first glance I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir seems to be about growing up in a haunted house, but it's much more than that. Author Jennifer Finney Boylan uses the near-translucent spirits inhabiting her family home as a metaphor for her dissociated youth. She spent her first 40 years as James Boylan, the boy's and man's body a bad fit for her soul.

The Boylan family moved to the aptly named "Coffin House" on Philadelphia's Main Line, and at once young James began to observe ghostly shapes drifting through the rooms. Through the teen years and in later visits as a young adult, alienated by feelings that "James" was meant to be "Jenny," the author continued to experience the ghosts. In more recent years, after transgender surgery turned James into Jenny at last, she visited the house with a "ghostbusting" team and came to a better understanding of the strange presence and what it was foreshadowing to the boy, near-translucent himself.

This memoir follows the theme of author Boylan's earlier book She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, expanding on her life with a full cast of eccentric extended family members and friends. Boylan's humor has a dark cast; she deflects her serious moods with lightning-quick turnarounds, yet the reader never doubts her seriousness. The book is full of music and cultural references that at times are the only tethers holding Jenny/James in the real world.

Parent and partner, professor, friend, musician, daughter, sister -- some of Boylan's relationships have thrived and some suffered. Her books leave me believing that, as she states, she's "solid" at last. I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir is not your everyday memoir but it will make you think -- about ghosts, but especially about the human experience.

Linda Bulger, 2008

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunted In More Ways Than One, February 22, 2008

By 

John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I had never heard of Jennifer Finney Boylan before I saw this book advertised, but I was drawn to it by the subtitle: Growing Up Haunted. We all live with memories of our past and from our family's pasts, and its interesting to see how others deal with their "hauntedness." Jennifer was born James Boylan, a child who felt "transparent" and "not there" through his childhood. Eventually, James recognized that he was trans-gendered, and succeeded in becoming a "solider" person as Jennifer. Before that transition she had a lively childhood in a house which had some weird spectres or "ghosts" along with a real living family of eccentrics.

Jennifer's story is interesting on several levels, both sad and amusing. She writes well and wittily and conveys a good impression of life in a haunted house as well as what it was like to grow up in a family which, while not wealthy, was part of Philadelphia's Main Line society.