Heidi Julavits Book order

The narrative explores the profound transition of motherhood as Heidi Julavits reflects on her son approaching adulthood amidst societal turmoil, including campus rape allegations. This personal journey prompts her to confront her identity as a mother and the challenges of preparing her son for an uncertain future. Rooted in her own Maine childhood experiences, the book intertwines family dynamics with broader cultural and philosophical questions, ultimately revealing that personal growth and understanding must stem from within.

An insightful meditation on time, relationships and identity, The Folded Clock is a funny, thoughtful and inquisitive diary for fans of Olivia Laing and Jenny Offill

A New York Times Notable Book Rereading her childhood diaries, Heidi Julavits hoped to find incontrovertible proof that she was always destined to be a writer. Instead, they “revealed me to possess the mind of a phobic tax auditor.” Thus was born a desire to try again, to chronicle her daily life—now as a forty-something woman, wife, mother, and writer. A meditation on time and self, youth and aging, friendship and romance, faith and fate, and art and ambition, in The Folded Clock one of the most gifted prose stylists in American letters explodes the typically confessional diary form with her trademark humor, honesty, and searing intelligence.

"An exploration of the questions we ask ourselves while getting dressed every day, and the answers from more than six hundred women"--From back cover.

From the acclaimed novelist of The Folded Clock and founding editor of The Believer magazine comes a "sharp-eyed, sardonic, hilarious" novel (The New York Times Book Review) about grief, female rivalry, and the furious power of a daughter’s love. Julia Severn is a talented student at an elite institute for psychics. When Julia’s mentor, the legendary Madame Ackerman, grows jealous of her protégée’s talents, she subjects Julia to the painful humiliation of reliving her mother’s suicide . . . and then launches a desperate psychic attack. But Julia’s gifts, though a threat to her teacher, prove an asset to others. Soon she’s recruited to track down a missing person who might have a connection to her mother. As Julia sifts through ghosts and astral clues, everything she thought she knew about her mother is called into question, and she discovers that her ability to know the minds of others—including her own—goes far deeper than she ever imagined.

The story revolves around the mysterious disappearance and sudden reappearance of sixteen-year-old Mary from her all-girls prep school. Her absence and return create deep emotional impacts on those around her, including her mother and the psychologist tasked with her treatment. The narrative explores themes of trauma, the complexities of mental health, and the ripple effects of a single event on a community. The author, known for The Mineral Palace, delves into the intricate relationships and emotional struggles faced by the characters.

Amidst clouds of dust and with a sense of purpose born of the Great Depression, Bena Jonsson -- young mother, physician's wife -- arrives in the desert town of Pueblo, Colorado, and immediately sets about creating a new life for her family. As the days unfold, however, she is quietly haunted by niggling doubts and an insidious loneliness, so she gratefully seizes the chance to explore her stalled career in journalism and accepts an unpaid position with the local paper. But bad omens begin stacking up like charms on a bracelet, and when Bena meets a prostitute accused of infanticide, her defence of the woman triggers a chain of events with unfathomable consequences. Written with an impeccable sense of history and full of impending doom, The Mineral Palace is a stylish corruption of the Medea myth -- a tragic love story and an indictment of society's treatment of untameable, liberated women.