For fans of Maggie Nelson and Meghan O'Rourke, Jeannie Vanasco
emerges as a definitive new voice in this stunning portrait of a
daughter's love for her father and her near-unraveling after his
death.
The night before her
father dies, eighteen-year-old Jeannie Vanasco promises she will
write a book for him. But this isn't the book she imagined. The
Glass Eye is Jeannie's struggle to honor her father, her
larger-than-life hero but also the man who named her after his
daughter from a previous marriage, a daughter who died.
After his funeral,
Jeannie spends the next decade in escalating mania, in and out of
hospitals--increasingly obsessed with the other Jeanne. Obsession
turns to investigation as Jeannie plumbs her childhood awareness of
her dead half sibling and hunts for clues into the mysterious
circumstances of her death. It becomes a puzzle Jeannie feels she
must solve to better understand herself and her father.
Jeannie Vanasco
pulls us into her unraveling with such intimacy that her insanity
becomes palpable, even logical. A brilliant exploration of the human
psyche, The Glass Eye deepens our definitions of love, sanity,
grief, and recovery.
