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The Folded Clock: A Diary by [Julavits, Heidi]

The Folded Clock: A Diary Kindle Edition

by Heidi Julavits (Author)

78 customer reviews

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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.”
Thus was born a desire to try again, to chronicle her daily life as a fortysomething woman, wife, mother, 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 loyalty, friendship and romance, faith and fate, marriage and family, desire and death, gossip and secrets, art and ambition.
The Folded Clock is as playful as it is brilliant, a tour de force by one of the most gifted prose stylists in American letters.

From the Hardcover edition.

Length: 306 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled

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Product details

File Size: 9293 KB
Print Length: 306 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0804171440
Publisher: Anchor (April 7, 2015)
Publication Date: April 7, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00N6PCZK4
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Not Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Screen Reader: Supported

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #117,308 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #41 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Essays & Correspondence > Diaries & Journals
- #44 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Essays & Correspondence > Letters & Correspondence
- #598 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Women

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Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars

5 star		56%
4 star		15%
3 star		12%
2 star		8%
1 star		9%

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Top Customer Reviews

Time, lost chances, and other middle aged laments

ByA. colberton June 30, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Heidi Julavits has written a straightforward memoir, as a diary. It gives us a two year snapshot, as a window into her life as a late forty year old woman, who has enjoyed some success as a novelist and writer, has spawned some lovely children, and has chewed up one spouse, and seems pretty well into chewing up her second. Don't let her assertion that she is self effacing and nice dissuade you from the creeping feeling that we are in the grasp of a narcissist who is prone to excesses, both in her appetite for attention, but also her fractious relationships with friends, spouse and child. It is through the lines, not in the lines, that we come to know her. Does she realize this? I hope so. How many of us have to go to therapy because we have so offended a friend, and are in turn, so wounded, that we seek third party help?.How many of us walk around in bathing suits that routinely cause wardrobe malfunctions, that predictably fail at the very moment we meet a famous writer? How many of us flirt shamelessly with other people, and then toy with these stirrings, because, well, we can? Her writing is certainly smart and her insight almost surgical, in that she advances her self portrait in a melange that is frighteningly honest, but also completely lacking in self awareness. But she can write with precision, and ability. I'm willing to tackle her fiction on account of the strength of her writing. Im just not sure I'd want to hang out with her for a weekend. She left me exhausted and irritable.

44 comments 16 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

A compelling meditation on time

ByKathryn Bon April 19, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.

0Comment 21 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Brilliant

ByHillaryon July 1, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Heidi Julavits can take the most common, heavy sorts of feelings and lift them up with her language till our case of the doldrums gleams gold in the light. I apologize for being so flowery. Blame the book. It has me very acutely aware of my words and my ability (perhaps inability, hm?) to be casually charming and witty. I digress. The Folded Clock is a profound piece of writing and I hult recommend it. You will cry and laugh and maybe feel the urge to scope out EBay for trinkets.

0Comment 6 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

In the moment, reading the Folded Clock.

Byvichrison May 17, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.

0Comment 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

A pleasant surprise!

Bymargieebeeon June 16, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

As others have noted, this isn't so much a diary, as it is short stories that are presented as dated entries. The author is in her 40s and her lifestyle is completely different than mine- I'm 28, no kids, never married. Despite the great differences in our lived experiences, I enjoyed the majority of short stories in this book. Some end abruptly and leaving you feeling, "Huh." Others are very thoughtful and make truly make you pause before reading the next. The author has a gift for making connections between things where I would not have otherwise seen connections. This is an easy read, but not in a mindless way, and I devoured this book. A pleasant surprise!

0Comment 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Heidi Julavits is My Hero

ByObjective Reader of Descriptionson April 17, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I love this book. But I've been reading Julavits for a while, also loved her other books. This one is relatable, but not in the way a female comedian writes a "relatable" book. She's funny, smart, and her thought process is much like your own. This books plot isnt as much an escapade like the others but its still really, really good.

0CommentWas this review helpful to you?YesNo

a stream of remembrances connected by days...

Byccon November 30, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

...is a more apt description than diary. Yes, these entries are dated, probe the private, reveal the flaws — humbly, and make me laugh raucously at the slow deconstruction of belief systems which force Heidi into compromise. I knew I would see glimpses of future and past selves, but I didn't expect to see so much resembling my own innards expressed in eloquent pardons, for as a diary we are privy to the interior context of desire and miscommunication. Though, perhaps I should have expected a kindred spirit when I searched this work after liking an unrelated article by the author in Aperture, I was compelled to rise to the challenge of reading a random read just because one nasty review struck me as particularly unfair, even for a book and author I had no previous alliance to — now I do.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Interesting

It is an interesting read. I tried a few times to put this book down but somehow I was drawn back to it. Can't quite explain that yet but perhaps that's the charm of this book?Read more

Published 1 month ago by CcZ

but the entries often feel like they end before really beginning

Julavitz has a fascinating mind, and I really appreciated her perspective, but the entries often feel like they end before really beginning.Read more

Published 4 months ago by Alexis M

Did not like the book

Did not like the book. Felt like a waste of my time. Read the whole book only because once I start something, I need to finish it through.Read more

Published 4 months ago by KSA77

but was disappointed. The author's narcissism peeked through too much for ...

Book was just okay. I had read a glowing review in NYT Book Review, but was disappointed. The author's narcissism peeked through too much for my taste.Read more

Published 4 months ago by Susan Bertken

I can't recommend this book highly enough—I've already sent copies to two ...

I can't recommend this book highly enough—I've already sent copies to two friends and lent a third my copy to enjoy.Read more

Published 7 months ago by Maggie C.

Not for me

Couldn't keep my eyes open.Read more

Published 8 months ago by Tina

too self focused to make for an e joy able read but offered plenty for our book group ...

Had sections of incredible writing; too self focused to make for an e joy able read but offered plenty for our book group to discuss Read more

Published 8 months ago by Leslie Akins

but her musings are either too superficial or faux profound to make this book seem anything but quirky at best and hopelessly so

Not my cup of tea at all. I suppose Julavits was hoping for a Montaigne-like meditation on the mundane, but her musings are either too superficial or faux profound to make this...Read more

Published 11 months ago by AJ

Unique read.

Unique and introspective. I could totally relate to this author and her way of thinking and observing.Read more

Published 11 months ago by Amazon Customer

Loved this book!

Like making a new friend and she allows you to read her diary. Insightful, funny, and riveting. So sad to reach the last chapter!Read more

Published 11 months ago by victoria hansen

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