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There's probably a better time for an author to publish an essay lamenting the state of book reviewing than on the eve of her second novel.
Heidi Julavits' campaign against "snark" actually was a reasoned plea for a new criticism of rigor and dialogue that goes beyond blurbiage.
From the angry reaction, however, you'd think she advocated lopping off critics' thumbs to forever eliminate Siskel-and-Ebert-style judgments.
Lost in the dust-up was The Effect of Living Backwards. It would not be blurbiage to call it brilliant. But 2003 also probably was the wrong time for a wickedly funny novel about a hijacking, a strange terrorist and a sibling rivalry that continues unabated on the oddly fated airliner. After a sparkling best-selling debut (The Mineral Palace), Julavits' momentum seemed derailed.
Her third novel, The Uses of Enchantment, won't be overshadowed by current events and doesn't carry insider cultural baggage.
But if Julavits seemed poised to become the brainiest best seller of her generation, this fascinating but flawed novel is a detour.
The story itself is an engaging brain-bender. Mary Veal, 31, returns home for her mother's funeral, upset that they never reconciled.
Fifteen years earlier, Mary had been abducted from her Massachusetts prep school after field hockey practice. Perhaps.
She emerged weeks later with supposedly no memory of what happened. The reality is more complicated: Mary appears to have willingly hopped into the stranger's car.
Did she fake her own disappearance? Her therapist thinks so and makes his career by basing a book about repressed adolescent sexuality on her case.
Her mother, still fighting to clear the name of an ancestor from the 1600s, would rather Mary be a liar than no longer a virgin. (Veal is a great name for someone raised in such a restricted environment.)
Julavits uses a clever structure, alternating chapters from the present with ones set during Mary's time in therapy and others titled "What Might Have Happened," which take place during her disappearance. It's a savvy way to convey the trickiness of memory and the way we all twist competing narratives.
She's funny. A Cambridge encounter group is called RWANDA: Radcliffe Women Against Needless Domestic Abuse. And she's a shrewd observer of family dynamics.
But Julavits is less successful with making her characters real. Her men are pushovers, Mary's sisters are paper-thin, and even Mary remains an enigma.
We're not being snarky, though, to suggest that this is a minor novel in a great career.
The Uses of Enchantment
By Heidi Julavits
Doubleday, 354 pp., $24.95
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