Customer Reviews

Effect Of Living Backwards

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

An ambitious book that ultimately bites off more then it can chew. Could the author be too much of a brainiac? There are lovely moments of texture and real insight, and then long insufferable passages where the author's strain is evident. A series of vignettes meant to expose the shameful secrets of the main characters fail because the secrets aren't, well, that shameful. The rivalry between the two sisters ends up repeating the same note over and over, squabbling leading to more squabbling. Nonetheless, the cumulative effect of the novel somehow does manage to land. The author does seem to have caught a side ways glace of much of what ails us, and the feeling you are left with at the end (an uneasy and ephemeral melancholy) may or may not be worth the read - it depends on your patience.

This novel is very different. The story premise is unusual, timely and interesting. It is a black comedy describing a pair of sisters involved in an airline hijacking experience. You never know if the hijacking is real, staged or something in between.

I really wanted to love this book. There is so much promise in this writer. Her prose is amazing; she seems to understand and utilize words that sound almost musical in her sentences. I found myself looking to the dictionary on multiple occasions, fascinated with the vocabulary and syntax. Unfortunately, the plot and story development, do not demonstrate the same level of maturity.

Author Heidi Julavits' shows she has extraordinary potential, having a remarkable ability to piece together interesting phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. If the plot of this novel was more substantial, or the two sister's characters were better developed, this would be a very good work. Instead, we are left with an interesting book, that leaves you puzzled about what you read when you reach the finish.

I generously rate this book at 2.75 out of 5.00 stars, rounded up to 3.00, for beautiful use of language, creativity in subject matter and a nice job in approaching the story. However, it rambles on in its linguistic beauty instead of really delivering a strong plot or climax. If this writer learns to finish as well as she starts, I believe we will see many other interesting works to come.

what a messy, mess, mess this book is!

there's a/are terrorist(s) on board a plane- but the reader is let in on the beginning that the terrorism isn't real- in fact there's some strange school where people are trained to act out fake terrorist attacks-- for what purpose? who knows.

oh, the narrator hints at this & that- the author lets us into the other passenger's minds briefly in these small interjected chapters- why? once again, who knows?

you really never know what the heck is going on- people die- but do they really? relationships take on a joking manner that only the author seems privvy to. oh my gosh! the only reason i finished the darn thing was due to a (wrong) belief that all of the confused nonsense would work itself out in the end.

do yourself a favor & don't bother with this book.

This novel is very different. The story premise is unusual, timely and interesting. It is a black comedy describing a pair of sisters involved in an airline hijacking experience. You never know if the hijacking is real, staged or something in between. The critical elements of the book concern the relationship between the sisters, rather than the interplay around the hijacking. (...)

Author Heidi Julavits shows she has extraordinary potential, having a remarkable ability to piece together interesting phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. If the plot of this novel was more substantial, or if the two sister's characters were better developed, this would be a very good work. Instead, we are left with an interesting book, that leaves you puzzled about what you read when you reach the finish.

I generously rate this book at 2.85 out of 5.00 stars, rounded up to 3.00, for beautiful use of language, creativity in subject matter and a nice job in approaching the story. However, it rambles on in its linguistic beauty instead of really delivering a strong plot or climax. If this writer learns to finish as well as she starts, I believe we will see many other interesting works to come.

I can definitely understand the 1 or 2 star ratings being given this book by other amazon.com reviewers; I have very mixed feelings about it myself. There were parts I enjoyed: the interplay between the two sisters, the interesting post-Sept.11 theorizing, the fact that the confusing plot did draw me in and didn't want to let go. What I didn't enjoy was that the reader can never distinguish what is real and what is not, who is "good" and who is "bad," whether the whole hijacking was set up as a study on how passengers react to certain aspects of terrorism or whether the whole BOOK was set up to see how readers react to certain aspects of bizarre and overzealous writing.

I liked the terrorist attacks on the US being referred to as "The Big Terrible" (which Julavits credits to Thomas Freidman in her acknowledgements) rather than the ubiqutous "9-11," and I also liked the creative hijacking story of a rugby team overpowering their captors and crashing the plane when it wasn't necessary (resulting in stickers posted in all airplanes saying WHEN TO OVERPOWER YOUR HIJACKERS). However, much of the writing about the terrorism school seemed contrived, as though Julavits was trying a little too hard, and the battle between the two factions there didn't make a lot of sense to me.

_The Effect of Living Backwards_ certainly held my interest, and in all I'd say that it was a good read. At times the writing was just a little hard to wade through... and I'm still trying to decide if the effort was worth it.

The cover art is masterful. A subtle blend of childhood sentimentality, middle-aged nostalgia, interspersed with a certain girl-power aesthetic a la Oprah Winfrey. Basically, cover art good; writing not so good.

Whereas Gravity's Rainbow is purely postmodern and a grand masterpiece, The effect of Living Backwards is very superfically postmodern, and attempts to be, but has so little depth, and seems so constructed in a vain attempt to be, that the reader comes away with the notion of a book advertising postmodernism rather than a truly postmodern book. Sort of like a giant billboard for postmodernism.

If we extrapolate Heidi Julavits career, it may be one of imitating masters. And to imitate is to fail. Always. She tried a Faulknerian book with The Mineral Palace, and now Pynchon or Rushdie, so don't be suprised if this white blonde jumps to going after Toni Morrison.

I was given this book by a girl in attempt to impress me with her literary choices. As I told her I spend weekeings reading.
I wasn't. Subsequently, I becamed worried about my newspaper's hiring practices as we both work for the local paper.
After reading 40+ pages the only thing I could think of is that The Effects Of Living Backwards must result in writing like this. Which is awful. I read some of the other reviews and didn't realize this book had such polirizing qualities, which is even more ironic than the title; as it attempts to tackle terrorism which could produce an intriguing book, but treats the subject matter in a juvenile manner that reminds me of coversations in the vein of "what if" situations that I had when I was stoned out of my mind in high school.
For instance:

A man takes a bong hit.
He says, "Hey man, what if a blind man hijacked a plane."
His friend takes a hit and says, "Yeah, like all terrorists don't see what's really going on, man."

Both men congradulate themselves for thinking in such profound terms.

I hope Ms. Julavits can straighten out her life and write in a more serious tone. I'm sure her publisher would appreciate it.

" 'That's the effect of living backwards,' the [Red] Queen said kindly: 'it always makes one a little giddy at first.' " is from "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There," so I had to pick up this book.
There was a fear on my part that assigning the names Alice and Edith to the main characters of this novel was a cheap attempt to gain the readership of those of us who love the Liddel sisters and the young mathematician who gave them immortality. There was also a fear that "Living Backwards" would take on the cheap parlor-trick quality that Martin Amis gave it in "Time's Arrow." Both fears were totally unfounded. Not only is this a totally original comment on the themes of Lewis Carrol, but its picture of sibling rivalry is deep, and it's the best book that I've read on terrorism and its tangled roots and motivations (as opposed to reductionist screeds about evildoers and gooddoers).

Maybe I'm just a sucker for Dodgsoniana, but I loved this book. I checked "The Mineral Palace" out of the library as soon as I returned this one to make sure that Ms. Julavits has the talent I feel she does after this, my first, exposure to her writing.

Again, this author attempts to use word-play to stand in the place of substance. Shame on her editors. Au courant, maybe, but little more than "The Emperor's New Clothes", New York style.