My Father's Glass Eye

My Father’s Glass Eye is Jeannie’s struggle to honour 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 she plumbs her childhood awareness of her dead half-sibling and hunts for clues into the mysterious circumstances of her death. It becomes a puzzle she must solve to better understand herself and her father.


Jeannie pulls us into her unravelling with such intimacy that her insanity becomes palpable, even logical. A brilliant exploration of the human psyche, My Father’s Glass Eye deepens our definitions of love, sanity, grief, and recovery.


***PRAISE FOR MY FATHER S GLASS EYE***



A NYLON and Newsweek Editor's Choice


'Wildly innovative' New York Magazine


'Brilliant . . . As the pages fly by, we're right by Vanasco, breathlessly experiencing her grief, mania, revelations, and - ultimately - her relief' Entertainment Weekly


'Powerful and ruminative . . . This is an illuminating manual for understanding grief and the strange places it leads' Publishers Weekly


'An absolutely beautiful exploration of family, grief, memory, and madness, this book is outstanding. . . . The layers found in this memoir are as plentiful as the layers found in the human eye; ultimately, it is as deeply layered as the human experience itself' Jamie Thomas, Women & Children First


'This is memoir at its best. The prose is powerful and often breathtaking - it'll make your heart break, it might make you cry, and you'll probably even laugh a few times. This is an elegy fierce and lyrical and raw, like none I've read before' Sarah Malley, Newtonville Books


'An intense and unforgettable memoir, as fascinating for its artistry as for its subject matter. . . . Lyric, haunted, smart and tortured, this is an obsessive love letter to a dead father as well as a singular work of literature' Shelf Awareness