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Title details for The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits - Available

The Folded Clock

by Heidi Julavits
Tavia Gilbert
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Like many young people, Heidi Julavits kept a diary. Decades later she found her old diaries in a storage bin, and hoped to discover the early evidence of the person (and writer) she'd since become. Instead, 'The actual diaries revealed me to possess the mind of a paranoid tax auditor.' The entries are daily chronicles of anxieties about grades, looks, boys, and popularity. After reading the confessions of her past self, writes Julavits, 'I want to good-naturedly laugh at this person. I want to but I can't. What she wanted then is scarcely different from what I want today.' Thus was born a desire to try again, to chronicle her daily life as a forty-something woman, wife, mother, and writer. The dazzling result is The Folded Clock, in which the diary form becomes a meditation on time and self.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 21, 2015

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781666591668
      • File size: 271749 KB
      • Duration: 09:26:08

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Heidi Julavits kept a diary for two years, but this memoir is not chronological, and its organization keeps the listener slightly off balance. As each day starts with "Today I . . . ," narrator Tavia Gilbert subtly matches her tone to the author's daily mood. As Julavits irreverently describes her love for "The Bachelorette" TV show, curiously explores a dumped Rolodex of photos at the airport, miserably reflects on a wet, lonely French winter as a teenager, and joyfully swims in the Atlantic in the summer, Gilbert is equally enthusiastic and rueful and sly and gossipy. Now and again, Julavits goes down a neurotic rabbit hole, stretching out the twisted logic of an absurd argument, and Gilbert matches her tone, sounding a little more crazy by the word. A.B. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 2, 2015
      When Julavits, a novelist (The Vanishers) and founding editor of the Believer magazine, rediscovered the diary she kept as a young girl, she was disappointed by its lack of imagination, style, and wit. So, in her 40s, she set out to chronicle the next two years of her life, complete with all the idiosyncrasies missing from her youthful writings. Displaying both charm and stark honesty, Julavits admits to having an abortion when she was 19, explores the dissolution of her first marriage, and laments the worst sex of her life. Receiving a wasp sting reminds her of the time she was in the window seat on a red-eye flight next to two sleeping passengers. Instead of
      disturbing them to use the lavatory, she attempted to relieve herself in an airsickness bag. And hearing an ambulance siren or conducting a fruitless Internet search unleashes her neurotic imagination. Each entry begins “Today I,” just as she began her diary as a girl. The entries aren’t ordered, and many depict Julavits as a not-always-likable woman of privilege. The diary angle makes for a clever hook, but masks what this really is—a compelling collection of intimate, untitled personal essays that reveal one woman’s ever-evolving soul. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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