Following her acclaimed debut, The Mineral Palace, Heidi Julavits presents a quirky, compelling novel about two sisters, a bizarre event, and the elusive nature of truth—a New York Times Notable Book.
Does Alice really hate her sister, or is that love? Was she really enrolled in grad school, or was that an elaborate hoax? Is this really a hijacking, or is it merely the effect of living backwards?
“Heidi Julavits—no stranger to edgy, dark topics—takes liberties with conventional notions of hijacking and hostages, weaving humor in a zingy and brainy spectrum...If you can take successive shots of wit with gulps of moral inquisition, then this fine book is for you.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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The Effect of Living Backwards
Following her acclaimed debut, The Mineral Palace, Heidi Julavits presents a quirky, compelling novel about two sisters, a bizarre event, and the elusive nature of truth—a New York Times Notable Book.
Does Alice really hate her sister, or is that love? Was she really enrolled in grad school, or was that an elaborate hoax? Is this really a hijacking, or is it merely the effect of living backwards?
“Heidi Julavits—no stranger to edgy, dark topics—takes liberties with conventional notions of hijacking and hostages, weaving humor in a zingy and brainy spectrum...If you can take successive shots of wit with gulps of moral inquisition, then this fine book is for you.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Following her acclaimed debut, The Mineral Palace, Heidi Julavits presents a quirky, compelling novel about two sisters, a bizarre event, and the elusive nature of truth—a New York Times Notable Book.
Does Alice really hate her sister, or is that love? Was she really enrolled in grad school, or was that an elaborate hoax? Is this really a hijacking, or is it merely the effect of living backwards?
“Heidi Julavits—no stranger to edgy, dark topics—takes liberties with conventional notions of hijacking and hostages, weaving humor in a zingy and brainy spectrum...If you can take successive shots of wit with gulps of moral inquisition, then this fine book is for you.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Heidi Julavits is the author of four critically acclaimed novels (The Vanishers, The Uses of Enchantment, The Effect of Living Backwards, and The Mineral Palace) and co-editor, with Sheila Heti and Leanne Shapton, of the New York Times bestseller Women in Clothes. Her fiction has appeared in Harper's Magazine, McSweeney’s, and The Best American Short Stories, among other places.
What People are Saying About This
George Saunders
An absolute tour de force of apparently limitless imaginative ability,
deep psychological insight, and astonishing verbal precision. In one fell
swoop, Heidi Julavits establishes herself as the Scheherazade of the new
Anti-Terror Age. Funny, unnerving, sophisticated, and dazzling in the
range of its invention, THE EFFECT OF LIVING BACKWARDS is a terrific and
important addition to our literature.