When Jennifer Finney Boylan was a man, he wrote one of the smartest teen fiction novels of the late-90s.
“Getting In,” about a group of four high school students taking a road trip through Ivy League colleges, was released around the same time “American Pie” and “Cruel Intentions” went through theaters. James Finney Boylan’s work, which contains secrets each character hold during their New England college journey, helped mark a time when hip high school students, fictitious or otherwise, gave us memorable and clever one-liners.
Now we have gone from flipping through Teen People to scrolling down Perez Hilton’s Web site. Finney has changed a bit too.
By 2003, James made the complete transition to Jennifer, undergoing gender reassignment after a lifetime bout of feeling trapped in a man’s body.
“She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders” is part biography, part philosophy. Being a woman means satisfying an internal desire, but it also entails dozens of questions to Jenny from family and friends of James. How can a married man with children threaten the family structure by becoming a woman? What do Boylan’s children think, and will it destroy her marriage to Grace? How will her students at Colby College respond? Will she stay in her R&B covers band?
Readers learn how dirty men at bars flirt with a woman when they have no idea she was a he — which, I suppose, is a complement to Boylan and her surgeon. The wife and kids have mixed reactions and so do her family members and colleagues in academia. Some don’t want to know her anymore, while others look at her with pride.
That’s what makes “She’s Not There” a fascinating read. Get through the random interludes, which come off as vague attempts at metaphorical writing, and you get a good idea of how strong love and companionship can be.
Existing in a life of its own is a chapter on Boylan’s small support group for transgender men and women, including an unfiltered portrait of tragedy and beauty through unbridled honesty.
