The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits -- discussion guide: Home

D'Ambrosio's work is exacting and emotionally generous, often as funny as it is devastating. "Loitering" gathers eleven original essays with new and previously uncollected work, so that a broader audience might discover one of our great living essayists. No matter his subject--Native American whaling, a Pentecostal "hell house," Mary Kay Letourneau, the work of J.D. Salinger, or, most often, his own family--D'Ambrosio approaches each piece with a singular voice and point of view; each essay, while unique and surprising, is unmistakably his own.

A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time,T"he Odd Woman and the City" explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same.

"Ongoingness" is a spare, meditative work that stands in stark contrast to the volubility of the diary. It is a haunting account of mortality and impermanence, of how we struggle to find clarity in the chaos of time that rushes around and over and through us.

A revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann. In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.

A wildly imaginative and emotionally intense novel about mothers, daughters, and the psychic damage women can inflict on one another. "The Vanishers" is a stunning meditation on grief, female rivalry, and the furious power of a daughter's love.

In late afternoon on November 7, 1985, sixteen-year-old Mary Veal was abducted after field hockey practice at her all-girls New England prep school. Or was she? A few weeks later an unharmed Mary reappears as suddenly and mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming to have little memory of what happened to her. "The Uses of Enchantment" weaves a spell in which the reader sees how the extraordinary power of a young woman's sexuality, and the desire to wield it, have a devastating effect on all involved.

Alice and Edith are sisters, soul mates, and archenemies. Alice, the "good girl," is everything the stunning, wanton, and morally whimsical Edith is not. Except that both are expert manipulators-a power that is tested and exploited when the plane they are on is hijacked. "The Effect of Living Backwards" is a comic, heartbreaking novel for our new and uncertain age.

"Women in Clothes" is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities -- famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old -- on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives.