A raucous, stunningly candid, deliriously smart diary of two years in the life o
f the incomparable Heidi Julavits
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. Inste
ad, "The actual diaries revealed me to possess the mind of a paranoid tax audito
r." 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 wa
nted then is scarcely different from what I want today."
Thus was born a desir
e to try again, to chronicle her daily life as a forty-something woman, wife, mo
ther, and writer. The dazzling result is "The Folded Clock," in which the diary
form becomes a meditation on time and self, youth and aging, betrayal and loyalt
y, friendship and romance, faith and fate, marriage and family, desire and death
, gossip and secrets, art and ambition. Concealed beneath the minute obsession w
ith "dailiness" are sharply observed moments of cultural criticism and emotional
ly driven philosophical queries. In keeping with the spirit of a diary, the tone
is confessional, sometimes shockingly so, as the focus shifts from the woman sh
e wants to be to the woman she may have become.
