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Julavits has written a compelling meditation on time, with the title's 'folded clock' being an apt metaphor for how time is made to fold in upon itself in the book's diary entries, which aren't organized chronologically. Because the entries are titled by date but not included in order, it took me a few entries to get into the rhythm; once I got into it, however, I let myself be carried along. The entries focus on everyday moments in the author's life, finding universal experience in these moments. Julavits often takes her relationship to an object, experience, or idea at one point in her life and examines how her relationship to it has changed over time, as a measure of how she has evolved as a person. For example, she has reread a biography of Edie Sedgwick multiple times throughout her life, and each time, different elements of the biography have appealed to her, appalled her, and aroused her interest.
Experiences that run through multiple entries include years spent working to hone her writing, summers spent living in Maine, motherhood, a first marriage and other romantic relationships, the author's current marriage, friendships, antique shopping, swimming in the ocean, watching The Bachelorette, and conversations with acquaintances and strangers. The meditative, confessional nature of writing about these experiences in a diary format led to this book containing my favorite kind of reading moments - those that come about when an author writes a truth about their life, giving eloquence to a shadowy feeling about the world or my own life that I'd been carrying with me but previously unable to see and understand. These moments are why I often seek out memoirs, and I can see this book being one I reread in the future as a measure of how I've evolved as a person, as Julavits writes of doing with the Sedgwick biography.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
"The Folded Clock" by Heidi Julavits joins the short list of books I've stayed up all night reading. It's by turns intimate, insightful, funny, and breathtaking.
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17 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Someone needs to write much more specifically about this book. So I will attempt to be the first to do so. I thought for a few pages that I wasn't going to like it, mostly because it didn't seem to have any specific pattern with diary entries that seem contradictory. But then I found myself enjoying these personal essays. (Heidi Julavits is a novelist. But this isn't a novel.) They are very random personal essays, each with a date but without a year. That too bothered for for a few pages. And then didn't. Again, it is the "folded clock." When you read that she has dedicated this book to "Ben," know that he is her current husband, a writer I really like: Ben Marcus. They live in both New York City and Camden, Maine. (So many current writers live in Maine! But also NYC, i.e., Elizabeth Strout.) So many of the personal essays reflect elements of life in those two places. But there are many that discuss her past, several about "my first husband." The only pattern is this one: each starts with "Today I...." So there is a sense of being in the present as well. The more I read about her, the more I wanted more. I suspect some of--or maybe all--the three one-star "reviews" (which aren't reviews at all) were written by people who didn't give the book a chance. By the way, it is a really gorgeous book to hold. I sure wouldn't want to be reading in on a tablet!
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I was crushed when this book was over and I certainly wish I could give it more than five stars for the pleasure it gave me. Ms. julavits has guts galore to speak so honestly and openly about herself. I found most of it intensely amusing, and her mind so vibrant I was insane with jealousy. How many people can bring their daily lives to life in such articulate detail, and then bring upon it some question, meaning, or revelation? Zip. I don’t envy what she takes in in a day, on top of children, which I learned make it very difficult to follow one’s own emotions and thoughts, but she does it anyway. I admired her articulation of time and only wish her the best in the future, because when you pass fifty, it gets even more subtle, complex, exhilarating and bewitching. For those that had wished for plot, you chose the wrong book. A law and order bestseller formula might better suit you. Heidi Julavits has earned the sophistication that mystifies you.
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I loved this book. However, each little piece seemed so ephemeral that I forgot the last one immediately after finishing it. There was no connective tissue to hold each of these gems together. It was kind of a zen thing where the best thing to do was to stay right in the present of each little essay. Right now, a week after finishing it I can see little bits of this and that as through a fog. The only one I remember clearly was the one about the $500 boots that the writer couldn't return because she didn't have the box.
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I thought I would like this book and actually thought I might love it. I am a fan of her other books and it is the type of book I gravitate to. Smart, funny woman who writes about her day, about the minutia that makes up the "stuff of life and what it was like for her. At times I laughed, at times I thought "yes, i want to talk to talk to her about this" and "what good company she is" so I was surprised that halfway through the book I became bored and began to skim through it. Finally, I put it down. I just stopped being interested. Thank you to Edelweiss for allowing me to review this book.
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