The Folded Clock: A Diary

When Heidi Julavits rediscovered her childhood diaries, she hoped to find in them proof that she was always destined to be a writer. Instead, oThe actual diaries revealed me to possess the mind of a phobic tax auditor.o The entries are daily chronicles of anxieties about grades, looks, boys, and popularity. More alarmingly, Julavits realized that what she wanted then and now has scarcely changed. Thus was born a desire to try again, to chronicle her daily life as a forty-something woman, wife, mother, and writer. In The Folded Clock, the diary form becomes a meditation on time and self, youth and aging, betrayal and loyalty, friendship and romance, faith and fate, marriage and family, desire and death, gossip and secrets, art and ambition. Concealed beneath the minute obsession with the day-to-day are sharply observed moments of cultural criticism, emotionally driven philosophical queries, and shocking candor, as the focus shifts from the woman Julavits wants to be to the woman she may have become. A tour de force by one of the most gifted prose stylists in American letters, The Folded Clock explodes the typically confessional diary form with humor, honesty, and searing intelligence.

About the Author :
Heidi Julavits is the author of two previous novels, The Mineral Palace and The Effect of Living Backwards, as well as a collaborative book, Hotel Andromeda, with the artist Jenny Gage. She is a founding editor of The Believer, and her writings have appeared in Esquire, Time, The New York Times, McSweeney's among other places. She lives in Manhattan and Maine.

Review :
“Exquisite. . . . A work so artful that it appears to be without artifice.” —The New York Times Book Review “Playful, intimate, and deeply insightful. . . . What you can tell from this book is that [Julavits] is someone you truly want to know—even better than you already do from reading her diary.” —Chicago Tribune “Scathingly funny. . . . An engaging portrait of a woman’s sense of identity, which continually shape-shifts with time.” —Los Angeles Times “[A] fascinating quasi-memoir. . . . The humor and the pathos of the book arise from [the] mismatch between the urgency of a decision in the moment and the awareness that always runs beneath it: that time will eventually make most things not matter.” —The Washington Post “A profound meditation on the passing of time.” —Entertainment Weekly “Cleverly crafted [and] thoughtfully entertaining. . . . Julavits’s best book yet.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Poignant.” —The Boston Globe “[Julavits] has a native’s eye for the small, sometimes indiscernible quirks that define local behavior. . . . There is glorious slippage, just enough to see its author in the various stages of her life, adhering to the truth as she sees it.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “[Julavits] takes moments in time and blows them up with thought and introspection and tangential relations. She condenses them down into polished nuggets. . . . Her mind is so smart and delightful and open.” —The Rumpus “I was utterly compelled by the big-hearted engine of rigor and wonder that drives them: her live electric mind.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams “Daring and inquisitive. . . . By probing deeply her interior and exterior environments, Julavits shows us our potential for expansion in all areas of our lives, even the most mundane.” —Bustle “Hilarious. . . . The thrill is where Julavits takes us.” —New York Post “Blur[s] the lines between contemplation and revelation, fact and fiction. . . . Julavits reveals a whole lot, in often-flawless prose, about motherhood, time, petty jealousies, grand debates, and the irresistible attractions of The Bachelorette.” —Vulture “A comforting read.” —Refinery29 “Irresistible and, at times, transcendent. . . . [Julavits is] like a mash-up of Lena Dunham and Kierkegaard. Which is to say, the book is at once raunchy, outrageous and funny, wistful, contemplative and smart.” —Portland Press Herald “A joy to read.  It’s a treasure house of revealing stories, and a thought-provoking illustration of the way that everyday encounters . . . provoke kaleidoscopic and dramatic memories to unfold within us. . . . This is a book worth reading and re-reading.” —Rebecca Curtis, author of Twenty Grand and Other Tales of Love & Money “Intricate and delicately worked. . . . Julavits transforms her diary into an exceptional work of art.” —BookPage “The Folded Clock is evidence of Julavits at her finest—an incisive and penetrating thinker, as exacting as she is forgiving in her observations about the self and the world.” —Electric Lit