The Folded Clock

by Heidi Julavits
Published by Dreamscape
Biography/Memoir

Heidi Julavits kept a diary for two years, but this memoir is not chronological, and its organization keeps the listener slightly off balance. As each day starts with “Today I . . . ,” narrator Tavia Gilbert subtly matches her tone to the author’s daily mood. As Julavits irreverently describes her love for “The Bachelorette” TV show, curiously explores a dumped Rolodex of photos at the airport, miserably reflects on a wet, lonely French winter as a teenager, and joyfully swims in the Atlantic in the summer, Gilbert is equally enthusiastic and rueful and sly and gossipy. Now and again, Julavits goes down a neurotic rabbit hole, stretching out the twisted logic of an absurd argument, and Gilbert matches her tone, sounding a little more crazy by the word. AudioFile Magazine