The Glass Eye

August 14, 2017
In this powerful and ruminative memoir, Vanasco explores the years following her father’s death as her grief transforms into an increasing obsession with her half-sister Jeanne, who died before Vanasco was born. Her own distress is complicated by a mood disorder that causes her to hear voices and attempt suicide and that she believes is caused by her unending misery. Though Vanasco never met her sister, she draws parallels between her despair and the effect her sister’s death had on her father. In one of the narrative’s most striking turns, she learns that she has inherited a burial plot purchased by her father next to Jeanne’s grave. Vanasco expertly weaves trenchant metaphors throughout the text, particularly with her father’s glass eye, which represents his mortality and the fragility of life. The narrative is framed with Vanasco’s reflections on writing as she attempts to fulfill the promise she made to her father the night before he died, that she would write a book about him. Though her description of the actual event of her father’s death is deeply moving, Vanasco is less successful when describing her writing process, which can veer into overly affected introspection (“I drew my childhood home and wrote ‘Metaphor’ on all the windows”). This is an illuminating manual for understanding grief and the strange places it leads.

September 1, 2017
A young women's grief-stricken meditation on the loss of her beloved father illuminates a lifelong battle with crippling bipolar disorder and depression.In her debut memoir, Vanasco (English/Towson Univ.), whose writing has appeared in the Believer, the Times Literary Supplement, and other journals, digs deep into the kind of obsessional thinking that proves to be every bit as constricting as it is impenetrable. Within its sad confines, however, there also exists rich, fertile lands filled with the possibility of lifesaving self-discovery, which she explores in unadorned, sparse prose that builds in power as it accumulates. She recalls mostly fond memories of her father: "I taped photographs from my childhood along the silver rails of the bed: my dad reading a book to me despite the white patch over his eye; my dad pulling me in a wooden sled; my dad clutching me on his lap and looking off somewhere as if he knew this was coming." What loomed ahead for the author was a terribly long and lonely struggle beginning, at age 18, to come to terms with her father's death--and to find meaning in the short life of a mysterious Jeanne, her half sister from her father's previous marriage. Jeanne, who was killed in an automobile accident as a teenager, has cast a long shadow over Vanasco's psyche, infecting her sense of self while also promising to bring her closer to her father. The author's relentless introspection, which includes almost offhanded recollections of terrible self-harm and institutionalization, manages to cast a spotlight on the art of memoir itself, as she valiantly struggles to find the best medium possible to convey the true essence of a daughter's love for her father. A deceptively spare life story that sneaks up and surprises you with its sudden fecundity and power.

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Starred review from September 1, 2017
When Vanasco was born, her sixtysomething father had already lost a child from a previous marriage, and one of his eyes to a rare ocular disease. The author was actually named after her father's late daughter, who was killed in a car accident at the age of 16. In this memoir, the living Jeannie Vanasco pieces together the details of her father's life and her own gaping loss when he passed while she was in college. She writes vividly of the exposed-nerve pain of losing a parent at such a tumultuous age. After her father's death, Vanasco struggles with diagnoses, including schizoaffective, bipolar, and borderline personality disorders. In writing the book, Vanasco examines whether her mental illness was caused by the loss of her father or the circumstances surrounding her birth. The language cuts quick to the heart of Vanasco's hurt; readers will immediately fall into the rhythm of her unrelenting inner dialogue. The greatest strength of this work is the author's self-awareness; she admits that writing a memoir about her experience with grief might be further contributing to her personal turmoil. Vanasco's candor, curiosity, and commitment to human understanding are not to be missed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)