The Effect of Living Backwards - by Heidi Julavits (Paperback)

About the Book

Alice and Edith are sisters, soul mates, and archenemies. Both are expert manipulators--a power that is tested and exploited when their plane is hijacked. "The Effect of Living Backwards" is a comic, heartbreaking novel for this new and uncertain age.

Book Synopsis

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

Review Quotes

Praise for The Effect of Living Backwards

"Savage and funny...wildly inventive."--The New York Times Book Review

"Fasten your seatbelt...[Julavits] has written a wickedly funny novel."--San Francisco Chronicle

"With astounding intelligence and unceasing acuity, Heidi Julavits fulfills the great promise of her talents, and jumps to the forefront of her generation. This could be the smartest and most challenging book I've read by anyone our age, and beyond that, it's just plain hard to put down."--Dave Eggers

"Backwards is colorful, bright, funny, and intriguing, and you genuinely care about Alice. Her smartly off-kilter sarcasm and sharp, cynical sound bites allow her to cope...while Julavits's elliptical narrative makes our own days seem boring and linear by contrast."--Seattle Weekly

"Profound and unsettling."--The San Diego Union-Tribune

"[A] gripping intellectual thriller."--Entertainment Weekly

"An absolute tour de force."--George Saunders

"One of the first novels to make sense--albeit with lots of crazy, satirical twists--of the post-Sept. 11 world."--The Buffalo News

About the Author

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.