The Effect of Living Backwards

Confession time. I have a crush on Heidi Julavits. I’ve never met her and can’t really conjure up an image of what she looks like–no, it’s her brain that I love. I adored both The Vanishers and The Uses of Enchantment because they opened up a whole world of literature for me that exists between science fiction and conventional narrative. She delves so deeply into the complex ways that our thoughts shape us, that her stories almost become alternate realities. Anyway, I was casting about for something to read this week and when I saw The Effect of Living Backwards on my shelf, I knew I had to read it.

Casting About

Unmoored, lost… all these words come up a lot lately in my reviews. I’ve been searching. This has been a really crazy year for me as I’ve published two books, started to write for the LA Review of Books, and most recently as I’ve accepted a new job. A really wonderful year, but also one that’s upended just about everything and I find myself seeking balance, consistency, and stability. None of that is likely to happen in the near term and I’m trying to embrace how wonderful change can be. Maybe that’s why I sought out The Effect of Living Backwards this week–because I knew that Julavits would force me to think deeply and in new ways.

Alice, the protagonist of The Effect of Living Backwards, is in the middle of her own mind fuck. So much so that I don’t know why I questioned for a second if her name was a Carroll reference. She’s at The International Institute for Terrorist Studies and she’s being asked to question everything about her life. Not just the events themselves–most importantly a hijacking that she and her sister were involved in–but her perceptions of those events. She’s asked to flip everything on its head and try and uncover what’s really real.

“After four more bewildering sessions with Clifford, my autobiography lay in penciled tatters on her metal desk. I admitted to the possibility… that the Moroccan Air plan on which my sister and I were passengers had never been a proper part of the Moroccan Air fleet. The pilots on Flight 919 were part of the hijacking, as were the other passengers, as were the police.” – Heidi Julavits, The Effect of Living Backwards

Crazy as this is going to sound, I could relate to this complete and total deconstruction of her life. At this point I don’t know whether it was having a professor for a father or being raised around a bunch of gifted and talented kids, but the impulse to take every aspect of my life apart and look at each component from all angles (including the “it was all a dream” approach) is ingrained in me. Sometimes to a paralyzing degree. This kind of flexible, deep thought is part of what makes me a novelist (for which I’m grateful), but it’s also something that leads me to watch shows like Alias and Orphan Black and start to develop (paranoid) theories about my upbringing.

Part of the mastery of The Effect of Living Backwards is that although Alice is going through this process of casting about to see what is (or might be) real, the story of the hijacking (which occupies much more of the book than I anticipated) feels deeply real. It takes real craft to be able to portray indecision and confusion on the part of a character in a way that feels concrete and relatable. This is not a comfortable book to read. And I’m so glad I read it anyway.

Ars Poetica

“Because we were our father’s daughters, I continued, which was to say because we were attracted to the justified manipulation of the scientific method, we decided to initiate our own secular Shame Book project” – Heidi Julavits, The Effect of Living Backwards

Alice and her sister Edith concoct (or do they transcribe?) stories of the shame experienced by people in their lives. Alice recounts tales of her entire life for Dr. Clifford. The hijackers and hostage negotiator create conflicting narratives about what’s happening with the plane.

This book is, on one level, about the art of storytelling. Alice’s questioning and unraveling of characters and actions and motivations felt very much like the process of writing a book. As I was hunting for the significant detail in the hostage negotiator’s calls, I was remembering carefully selecting these types of details in my own writing so that they would give my readers the information they need to ground themselves in time. And the same happened when I encountered a repeated passage, or, more interestingly, a passage that was slightly torqued in its repetition.

“People do not tell accurate stories about themselves when they are given the chance. They tell, as Miles Keebler called them, ‘representative anecdotes.'” – Heidi Julavits, The Effect of Living Backwards

Reading this book, I realized that I use fiction to create stability and comprehension in my world. I narrow the threads of the narrative down. I eliminate nonessential characters. I seek the themes and also the wonder so that the book is coherent without being didactic. By reading about Alice’s “childhood of theoretical decision-making,” I was starting to understand what an asset all those hours of brain games were. As uncomfortable as I was in a narrative that did not have a concrete reality, The Effect of Living Backwards upended my thinking just enough to see the bright side of having he ability to see–and ultimately parse–all the possibilities.

Ambiguity Done Well

I still don’t fully know the truth of this book. And I’m fine with that. I think on a second and third read, The Effect of Living Backwards would continue to unfold. It’s the type of book I could write a dissertation about. Creating those layers of nuance and potentiality is a true art. One I appreciated even more this week when watching the season finale of Hannibal. Although at first I really loved that show, I’ve begun to feel more and more like even the writers don’t know what’s happening next. And in the final scene of the season (which I will not reveal here), I was left with yet another moment of “what the hell, why?”

As much I don’t know which version of reality to trust in Julavits’ book, I trust Julavits to have embedded the right details and motivations to make the story ambiguous rather than arbitrary. I may never read deeper into the book and get beyond the ambiguity (turns out I might like living in this state more than I thought), but I love knowing that the possibility exists.

As I’m working to delve into my next writing project, I’m also living my life a little backwards right now. I’m so glad I read this book at this time. I needed to see that ability to first see and then winnow all the factors as a strength rather than as the instrument of paralysis it can sometimes seem like. I don’t know what I’ll publish next (or when), but I hope it’s at least a tiny bit as transformational and intelligent as Julavits’ writing is.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of The Effect of Living Backwards from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Isla McKetta, MFA

Author of Polska, 1994 and co-author of Clear Out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer's Guide for Transforming Artifacts into Art, Isla writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and BAs in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Washington. Isla makes her home in Seattle where she writes fiction, poetry, and book reviews and has served on the board of Seattle City of Literature and Hugo House. Recent poems can be found at antiBODY, Cascadia Rising, Hummingbird, {isacoustic*}, Lily Poetry, Minerva Rising, and Riddled with Arrows.