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.