The Uses of Enchantment: A Novel [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [MP3 CD]

Heidi Julavits (Author), Shelly Frasier (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2007

In late afternoon on November 7, 1985, sixteen-year-old Mary Veal was abducted after field hockey practice at her all-girls New England prep school. Or was she?A few weeks later an unharmed Mary reappears as suddenly and mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming to have little memory of what happened to her. Her mother, concerned that Mary has somehow been sullied by the experience, sends her to therapy with a psychologist named Dr. Hammer. Mary turns out to be a cagey and difficult patient and Dr. Hammer begins to suspect Mary concocted her tale of abduction when he discovers its parallels with a seventeenth-century narrative of a girl who was abducted by Indians and later caused her rescuer to be hanged as a witch. Hammer, eager to further his professional reputation, decides to write a book about Mary's faked abduction, a project her mother sanctions because she'd rather her daughter be a liar than a rape victim. Fifteen years later, Mary has returned to Boston for her mother's funeral. Her abduction-real or imagined-has tainted many lives, including her own. When Mary finds a suggestive letter sent to her mother, she suspects her mother planned a reconciliation before her death. Thus begins a quest that requires Mary to revisit the people and places in her past. The Uses of Enchantment weaves a spell in which the power of a young woman's sexuality, and her desire to wield it, has a devastating effect on all involved. The riveting cat-and-mouse power games between doctor and patient, and between abductor and abductee, are gradually, dreamily revealed, along with the truth about what actually happened in 1985. Heidi Julavits is in full command of her considerable gifts, and has crafted a dazzling narrative sure to garner her further acclaim as one of the best novelists working today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. On November 7, 1985, Mary Veal, 16, a not especially distinguished upper-middle-class girl, disappears from New England's Semmering Academy. A month later she reappears at Semmering, claiming amnesia, but hinting at abduction and ravishment. The events in Believer editor Julavits's third, beautifully executed novel take place on three levels: one, dedicated to "what might have happened," is the story of the supposedly blank interval; another is dedicated to the inevitable therapeutic aftermath, as Mary's therapist, Dr. Hammer, tries to discover whether Mary is lying, either about the abduction or the amnesia; and the present of the novel, which revolves around the funeral of Mary's mother, Paula, in 1999. There, Mary feels not only the hostility of her sisters, Regina (an unsuccessful poet) and Gaby (a disheveled lesbian) but Paula's posthumous hostility. Or is that an illusion? This structure delicately balances between gothic and comic, allowing Julavits to play variations on Mary's life and on the '80s moral panic of repressed memory syndromes and wild fears of child abuse. While Julavits (The Effect of Living Backwards) sometimes lets an overheated style distract from her central story, as its various layers coalesce, the mystery of what did happen to Mary Veal will enthrall the reader to the very last page. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

The author's third novel is a spooky coming-of-age tale set in West Salem, Massachusetts, a town whose witch-hanging history both captivates and circumscribes the lives of the teen-age girls who reside there. One afternoon in 1985, sixteen-year-old Mary Veal disappears from field-hockey practice at the austere Semmering Academy; she reappears a few weeks later claiming to have been abducted. The truth of what happened is only hinted at in Mary's sexually charged experiences with her supposed captor and in her provocative exchanges with the therapist assigned to her case. He decides that Mary is lying - aspects of her story seem taken from a previous student's faked abduction, itself inspired by a centuries-old fable involving a kidnapped girl and witchcraft - but, it turns out, he is not without his own agenda. Julavits expertly keeps the reader baffled until the end, but beneath the mystery is a sophisticated meditation on truth and bias.
Copyright © 2006 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• MP3 CD
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged,MP3 - Unabridged CD edition (January 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400153492
• ISBN-13: 978-1400153497
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,204,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Heidi Julavits was born in Portland, Maine, in 1968. She graduated from Dartmouth College and has an MFA from Columbia University. Her short stories have appeared in Harper's, Esquire, the Best American Short Stories, Zoetrope, among other places. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, Elle, and the Best American Travel Essays. She is a founding co-editor of The Believer magazine, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, Ben Marcus, and their two children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An interesting premise - but an unsatisfying read., January 4, 2007

By 

Movie Buff (Easton, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Uses of Enchantment: A Novel (Hardcover)

I purchased this book based on a favorable review but came away disappointed but the unlikable characters, clever yet unbelievable dialogue and ambiguous ending.

The plot: Mary Veal returns home to attend the funeral of her mother and reconnect with her estranged family. The book flashbacks to two significant events in her life: the first, when she hops into a stranger's car and embarks on a journey of arranged abduction/seduction with her captor. The second is her time in therapy with Dr. Hammer. Mary claims amnesia about the incident but the doctor doesn't believe her and sees his patient as a way to advance his career and reputation.

The book is a difficult read, primarily because not one of the characters is likeable in any way. While the three male characters (Mary's father, captor, and therapist) are weak men damaged by past events, the author reserves most of her scorn for the women in her book. There are stereotypical frosty women (Mary's mother and sisters, Miss Pym), manipulators (Roz Biedelman, Bettina Spencer) and drunks (Aunt Helen). But the most unlikable character is Mary herself - who not only fails to take responsibility for what she has done but, like the child she remains, doesn't understand why everyone is so hostile towards her.

The book jacket teases that the events of Mary's youth will be gradually revealed - which is simply not true. The question of whether the "abduction" was real or imagined is never a mystery (The author lets you know pretty early on how Mary came to disappear). Rather, by the time you reach the confusing ending there are a host of unanswered questions: What was her relationship with her family before the incident? Why did Mary choose to go with the stranger? What happened during the time of her captivity? Did Mary's mother ever forgive her? and How was Mary changed by the mistakes she made as a youth?

In addition, the absence of quotation marks around dialogue is an unnecessary distraction.

Overall, I can not recommend this book.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Frustrating, December 4, 2006

By 

Edie Sousa (Manhattan) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Uses of Enchantment: A Novel (Hardcover)

I see this book made the Times list of Notable Books for 2006. I wish I understood why. I get annoyed with books that make me feel like an inadequate or uncomprehending reader, which is what this book did. Too clever by half. I had a sense that the author had a blast constructing this tale--but I was exhausted by the time I finished it. And why, in a book that is so dialogue-driven, must we sacrifice quotation marks? Such a simple device--and it would have helped immeasurably. I'm sure that if I went back and reread the book, many more pieces would fall into place. But I shouldn't have to do that--and I have other things I'm dying to read. I recommend this book only if you have large, uninterrupted blocks of reading time so that you can ponder all the references, both within and without the text. I just didn't enjoy having to work so hard (and I'm not sure whether or not she was abducted either!)

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing, but leaves you wanting more, February 17, 2007

By 

Anne (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Uses of Enchantment: A Novel (Hardcover)

Although I'd had a bad experience with one of Julavits' previous novels (THE MINERAL PALACE), the subject matter of her latest effort, THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT, caught my attention and I decided to have another go. This time around, I must say that Julavits has grown as a writer and I found this novel much more interesting, if not completely satisfying.

What really happened to Mary Veal, a Boston high school girl descended from a Salem witch and purportedly kidnapped by a sexual predator? The reader never knows for sure and the convention of the unreliable narrator (in this case, narrators) is perfect for a novel that ventures into the fascinating and politically incorrect territory of inexperienced feminine aggression, potentially make-believe sexual abuse, maternal lies and feminist psychotherapy. Julavits is at her best skewering feminist pieties in the satirically drawn character of Dr. Roz Biedelman. Also intriguing is Julvits' layering of Mary's tale with possible psychological forerunners: the hysteric Dora as interpreted by Freud; Bettina Spencer, an earlier "victim" of a faked abduction from the same high school Mary attended; and, of course, Abigail Lake, Mary's falsely accused Salem ancestor.

The narrative evolves in three parts: "What Might Have Happened" when Mary was abducted from her school in 1986; the ghosts from the past Mary must confront when she returns to Boston for her mother's funeral in 1999; and the notes taken by her psychiatrist, Dr. Hammer, whose name makes obvious reference to the 15th-century witch-hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches).

The most satisfying element of THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT is Julavits' play on historical and current ideas of female sexuality. But this is also where it begins to fall down. Much more could have been imagined and explored. Least satisfying is her characterization of Mary. I finished the book without any real sense of who Mary was as a girl and who she is now. The description of Mary's tense relationship with her sisters -- and the relationship of the three girls with their mother -- is incomplete. None of Julavits' characters leap off the page as, well, characters. The exception, Roz Biedelman, is closer to caricature.

Although I was initially drawn into this story, I found the narrative fizzled towards the end and I was left asking, is that it? And --Julavits' unspoken but apparent conclusion -- is it really all our mothers' fault?