The provocative bestseller She’s Not There is the winning, utterly surprising story of a person changing genders. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Jennifer Finney Boylan explores the territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of family. Told in Boylan’s fresh voice, She’s Not There is about a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret. Through her clear eyes, She’s Not There provides a new window on the confounding process of accepting our true selves.

“Probably no book I’ve read in recent years has made me so question my basic assumptions about both the centrality and the permeability of gender, and made me recognize myself in a situation I’ve never known and have never faced . . . The universality of the astonishingly uncommon: that’s the trick of She’s Not There. And with laughs, too. What a good book.” —Anna Quindlen, from the Introduction to the Book-of-the-Month-Club edition.

Both Jennifer and Grace are brutally honest in how they feel; at times I found their honesty almost too painful to read.

But shouldn't everyone have a friend like Richard Russo! What a supportive and thoroughly caring person he is. Boylan's best friend, he writes a warm and loving afterward to this story.


"What makes imagining the worst so easy?"   March 29, 2008
 31 out of 33 found this review helpful

Jennifer Finney Boylan spent her first 40 years as a woman in a man's body. She's Not There : A Life in Two Genders is Jennifer's story about growing up as James, knowing with "heartbroken conviction" that she was living in the wrong life, and hoping to be "cured by love."

James Boylan met and married Grace and became a professor at Colby College in Maine. Together they raised two sons. Boylan's life included playing in various bands, writing and publishing successful books, and constant excruciating dissonance and concealment. At age forty-two, after years of therapy and exploring transgender issues, Boylan began the transition to a female body. This was achieved through hormone therapy and eventual gender reassignment surgery.

We are led to understand that she didn't DECIDE to make this transition, but rather stopped resisting it. Boylan's writing is often wry and even funny, but she never tries to conceal the pain of her transgendered life and the redemptive integration of her reassignment. She moves back and forth in time, framing the story with an emotionally revealing opening and then varying the intensity throughout.

The impact on Boylan's family and friends was "atomic." Boylan chose fictional names for the non-public people in this memoir, and her choice of the name Grace for her spouse cannot be by chance. After years of marriage, Grace mourned the loss of her husband while finding enough love and faith in her life partner to stay in the relationship. Unstinting in her own self-exposure, Boylan leaves a veil of privacy over the nature of her spouse's accommodation to this change.

In a riveting afterword (from which my title line is taken), Boylan's closest friend, author Richard Russo, explores his own response to Jennifer's transition and its impact. Russo writes of Grace: "Years earlier, her heart had inclined in the direction of another soul...We love whom we love. In the past two years, for Grace, everything had changed and nothing had changed. Her heart still inclined, as was its habit."

She's Not There : A Life in Two Genders is a beautifully written story of hope, inviting us to reassess the meaning of love and friendship. To call it a book about sex change would be to sell its message far too short.

Highly recommended.

Linda Bulger, 2008


A Return to Modesty, please.   March 19, 2004
 23 out of 78 found this review helpful

After reading the last page of this book, I am left both with tremendous pity for his wife and children, and a tremendous sense of contempt for Boylan. Not only they had to endure his selfishness, but on top of that he had to put in on writing. I will never forget what John Irving wrote as foreword to his short story "Almost in Iowa": "writing about your divorce constitutes a different form of child abuse". Well, eliminating the very last semblance of privacy for his family (for example, describing the last time he ands his wife made love) is as low as someone can get. I imagine that with the expensive medical treatments and operations, a book deal was mandatory.

What a selfish individual. His wife is who put it in best terms: he asked at one point how she was feeling, and she replied, "does it matter?" I give Boylan credit in that he transcribes all this in the book, not hiding the fact of his selfish, self-centered behavior. He forgot that once you bring human beings into this world, your life is not your own anymore. How he manages to beautify his manipulation and end up convincing himself that this is what-had-to-be makes me sick. "Realities ignored prepare their own revenge".

A friend asked him after his transformation if his sense of irony was the first thing to go. Obviously not. As a good-bye ceremony to his manhood, Boylan cannot choose anything better than peeing against a tree. He uses his grandmother's silver to examine his son's stool, looking for a marble. He writes a letter to NASA asking to be the first transsexual in space. He even got a reply, and I resent him for eliciting a waste of my tax dollars. I couldn't stand the self-congratulatory reproduction of all the great letters of support and admiration he received. After her tirade against Nora Ephron, he covers all basis by excusing his exuberance with a "sorry, but i'm going through my teenage years right now!"

I closed the book feeling that Jim Boylan is just a vain and egotistical individual. A Return to Modesty, please.


A good book on a complex subject   September 9, 2003
 20 out of 23 found this review helpful

I went into reading this book with more then a bit of skepticism, having seen other examples of transgender people telling their story fall short of what I have known and experienced (yep, I am a transgender M to F myself). Anyway I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Ms. Boylan writes with a grace and a style that made the book easily readable and one for me that I wanted to read, rather then had to read.

Some people might criticize the relatively light tone she takes with some of the darker issues she had to face (like a disapproving sister) but after reading so many doom and gloom tales that over emphasize that side, this was a breath of fresh air.

As someone like Ms. Boylan who is going through transition as a family (with some differences in terms of family dynamics) I can say that the emotions she writes about, her and of those around her, if lightened up, are real. Her spouse deals with this differently then many spouses would, for sure, but the pain and the hurt expressed is true in my experience. Likewise, the uncertainty of people around a transitioning person is portrayed very well here, especially in the relationship with her friend Richard Russo. I am glad that Jenny made the point that not only is the person transitioning, so are the people around them.

I also would like to comment on some of the other reviews, who imply that Jenny "glossed over" the pain of her family, or implied she was some sort of typical middle age man just "doing his own thing". I suspect if she glossed over the raw emotions it was to protect her family and their privacy, not about trivializing them. As far as this being some sort of middle age crisis and a 'choice', forget it. As someone who is there, I can tell you it is no choice when someone transititions at this age (or later), by then it is do this or perish as a person.

I recommend this book to all readers, no matter of who they are. It is well written, and I think it serves as a gentle and informative (though not complete) portrayal of a complex subject and of someone finally becoming themselves.


Interesting and entertaining!   July 30, 2003
 19 out of 23 found this review helpful

Jennifer Finney Boylan's book offers a look into the true story of the life of a transgendered person. In it she recounts her struggles to be male, all the while feeling inherently female in the wrong body. As a mismatched mind and body, the author gives the reader a sense of the confusion that results, that is, until the day James realizes that, he would be happier if he became a woman. From childhood through adulthood, including marriage as a man to a woman and fatherhood, Ms. Boylan takes the reader through the process of hormone therapy and surgery to become Jennifer, all the while gently and lovingly working through the bumps of taking longstanding relationships along for the ride.

Boylan presents her life story with sensitivity, warmth and humor making it a very good read. I recommend this book for its entertainment value and the opportunity it presents to educate the reader about this little known condition.