THE FOLDED CLOCK: A DIARY by Heidi Julavits

I loved this dip into the psyche of a writer I have never read, but after finishing this diary, I ordered everything else she’s published. Witty, acerbic, laugh-out-loud funny, and intimate about the life of a writer, wanting to be a writer, ambition, art, destiny, time, and love. And everything else in between. Set up as diary entries with no years listed and not in chronological order by date, The Folded Clock—like its visual representation, The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali—recaptures what it felt like to live out various experiences. Is it true, or is it a writer taking license with memory? It doesn’t matter. Whatever you call it, Julavits’s diary is magic.

Favorite line(s): So, so many. But here is this one: Loss, what I am trying to say, so long as you’re dealing with objects, can be spun as opportunity. Because I lost my passport we did not die in the Sahara. Because I lost a cashmere cardigan at a bus stop in Hyde Park, and decided that the University of  Chicago student who probably found it would, instead of keeping it, decide to sell it on eBay to make some pocket money, I discovered eBay, and truly feel that eBay has measurably improved my mental quality of life more than doctors or drugs. Because I lost a necklace in a river I learned that the state of Vermont has a scuba diving club. All of this does and does not explain why my mother-in-law, at my marriage to her son, read “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop, the opening lines of which are

The area of losing isn’t hard to master;

So many things seem filled with the intent

To be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Nor does it explain how I lost my way today. I started writing because I was holding a fountain pen in my hand and a drip of blue ink landed on my sweater. Without thinking I stuck the seater in my mouth. I sucked the ink like it was blood.

HAPPINESS FALLS by Angie Kim

The novel opens with 14-year-old Eugene dodging traffic as he runs across a busy street. Eugene has Angelman’s syndrome and doesn’t speak. Hours later the family realizes Adam, the father, did not come home with Eugene after their morning hike in a local park. Did he run away with Eugene’s speech therapist? Was foul play involved? Did Eugene have something to do with his dad’s disappearance? The police are called. An arrest is made. Lawyers get involved. All the while, Mia, Eugene’s older sister, gives the reader her take on the analytics of what could have happened on that fateful morning. She’s a savvy twenty-year-old with an uncanny ability to compartmentalize her emotions. Lots of intellectual leapfrogging around in this one. Might it have been a stronger story if we had heard from other characters? Namely, the mom, Hannah, a complicated character herself. 

Favorite line(s): Even if you believe that everything we experience gets stored, including dreams and in utero sensations, any of which we can access by triggering the right synaptic connections, that still accounts for only a tiny fraction of our rains. So the question is, why? Why all this wasted extra brain space we could never hope to fill? A related question: Have you ever had a name/image/phrase pop up in your brain you don’t remember ever hearing or seeing, and you think, Where in the world did that come from? One possible answer to both questions, according to certain philosophers: all human knowledge is within us, stored in each of our brains, and as we live our lives, our experiences trigger the connections that allow individuals to access these omnipresent points of knowledge—similar to how individual memories work, but at a tribal or species level.

DAUGHTER by Claudia Dey

Mona, the narrator of Daughter, has a complicated conspiratorial relationship with her father, Paul, that wreaks havoc on both their lives. Desperate for his attention and approval, Mona only hears from Paul when he wants her on his side to justify his infidelities. We learn through backstory that Paul left Mona’s mother out of boredom for an heiress, Cherry, who lords over Paul’s life with her money and the daughter they share together, Eva. Then he steps out on Cherry with his publicist, Lee. (Paul is a famous novelist.) Because of Mona’s help in keeping Paul’s affair secret, her sister Eva cuts her out of her life. Mona is fragile, and this sisterly feud is an ongoing plot within the novel. Yes, there’s another sister in the mix and another affair—but it’s the story of Mona and Paul’s daughter-father dysfunction dance that hovers like a toxic cloud. There’s a stillbirth and grieving for so many in this novel the sadness seems unending. Since the narrator is a playwright, and so is the author, it makes sense Daughter would make an excellent play with its Tennessee William unreliable female narrator vibes.    

Favorite line(s): I would tell Paul things I could not tell Wes because I was already such a burden to Wes, I was already so disfigured and ugly with need. You should leave me, I would beg Wes. It told Paul that grief was immovable and it had no dimension, it was just there, and it lived in my throat and in my chest and in my organs. I would talk in an almost-whisper to Paul. I told Paul that I didn’t know if I wanted the grief to go away because it was of the baby, it was my only form of closeness to him. And then I would peel back the covers to try to get my breath, and I would look around our bedroom, and think, Paul has never been to our apartment, does he even know where I live.