A review by maureenstantonwriter
The Glass Eye: A Memoir by Jeannie Vanasco

4.0

This memoir is, in the end, affecting. The author lost her beloved father when she was just college-age, and her grief fractures into a mental health breakdown, manifest as a search to understand his grief over the decades earlier loss of another daughter who shares the author's name. A meta-narrative throughout the book demonstrates and at times seems to enact the author's obsessions, though at times it feels distracting and indulgent. Vanasco is not a prose stylist (in this book anyway, she has an MFA in poetry and nonfiction), but she has an interesting intellect. This could be called a fragmented memoir, told through intertwining threads, a form that perhaps mirrors the author's own rushing swirling thought processes during manic stages. By the end, I was deeply moved by a young woman's overwhelming grief and yearning for the father who adored and protected her.