The Size of Dreaming

The Size of Dreaming is a fearless coming-of-age memoir about intellect, isolation, and the cost of escaping a brilliant but dangerous family.

Growing up in upstate New York, Julia Mattingly is the only child of two towering academic parents whose obsessions, paranoia, and rigid expectations leave little room for ordinary childhood or error. Raised among classical languages, antiques, and unrelenting surveillance, Julia learns early that silence is survival and escape is everything.

As adolescence widens her world, from libraries and boarding school to first love, drugs, ambition, and art, Julia begins to discover both the power and peril of independence. A passionate affair with an older professor and an escalating war with her parents push her toward a terrifying question: how much of her life truly belongs to her?

By turns darkly funny, harrowing, and luminous, The Size of Dreaming is the story of a young woman claiming authorship of her own mind. It is a memoir about growing up under genius, breaking free from control disguised as love, and choosing imagination, risk, and truth over obedience.

Written with razor-sharp intelligence and unflinching honesty, this book is a testament to what it takes to escape, and to begin.