Did She or Didn't She? A Troubled Teen's Trippy Tale

Founding Believer editor Heidi Julavits' new book, The Uses of Enchantment, teases our fundamental assumptions about relationships and the objective nature of truth, even as it entertains the reader with an intriguing plot and characters.
The novel centers around Mary Veal, who may or may not have orchestrated her own kidnapping, seduction, or possibly rape, as a troubled teenager. It is divided into three alternating narrative threads. The first, tauntingly entitled, "What Might Have Happened," chronicles the surreal exchanges between Mary and her purported abductor. The second compiles the notes of Mary's comically bumbling therapist, Dr. Hammer, as he attempts to extract the truth about the abduction from his unwilling patient. The third follows the adult Mary's return home for her estranged mother's funeral and her encounters with people from her past as she searches for signs that her mother forgave her before she died. This could be dangerously sentimental territory, but Julavits' bitingly intelligent prose steers the novel into a part black-humored look at the angst of a puritanical New England suburb and part meditation on the essential impossibility of knowing another person.
Most of Julavits' characters are distinctly unlikable, from Mary's glacial mother, a woman who would rather think of her daughter as a pathological liar than admit she had been raped, to Roz Biedelman, the manipulative therapist who questions Dr. Hammer's conclusions about Mary's case in order to further her own career. Unfortunately, some of them are also one-dimensional, acting more as devices for moving the plot along than as plausible human beings. Mary's bitter sisters appear incapable of empathy, or of considering much of anything beyond their own frozen lives. Roz is meant as satire, but she is not human enough for the satire to succeed, rendering her merely irritating. And the adolescent Mary's calculated, knowing dialogue makes her somewhat less than believable as a wealthy, sheltered student at an all-girls prep school.
The Uses of Enchantment also casts an unsparing eye on the dysfunctional interactions between its characters. Every manner of self-delusion, misunderstanding, and self-absorption blocks these people from relating to one another. The climactic confrontation between Mary and her former abductor, which parallels an earlier scene between the two, powerfully demonstrates the elusive nature of human connection: "He was an empty person, he'd always been empty and that was why she'd chosen him. He was easy to fool. He wouldn't be able to see that she was as empty as he was." This can all make for pretty bleak reading-the first few times Mary's sisters relentlessly tear into her are amusing, but by the end of the book the reader may feel the urge to start clawing the nearest innocent bystander.
Fortunately, the caustic wit of the novel, displayed especially in the scenes between the young Mary and Dr. Hammer, ensures that the book's dour take on human nature doesn't overwhelm. Julavits is especially adept at snappy dialogue. The manipulative verbal jousting between patient and therapist, and abuductor and abductee, is both clever and revealing: " 'I guess because you don't agree with a statement even if all facts point in that direction. It's the privilege of an amnesiac', he said. 'You can't be an amnesiac about the present,' the girl said. 'No?' the man said. 'Is there a rule about when a person can start forgetting?'"
While Julavits conducts a probing search of her own into the human psyche, the novel's most mocking pieces are reserved for that most bullied of targets, therapy. The portrait of Mary's psychologist in particular is wickedly recognizable. Dr. Hammer effectively blinds himself from all vestiges of the truth with psychoanalytical jargon: "'So the point of the game is to take control of a situation in which you have no control,' I said. Mary regarded me queerly. 'The point of the game is to win', she said."
Flashy dialogue and plot aside, the most compelling piece of Julavits' complicated novel is also its saddest. The desire to rebel against her repressive mother drives the young Mary, and the desire to understand whether her mother ever forgave her fuels the adult Mary. It is a tribute to Julavits' talent that her version of this somewhat worn-out subject is, like the rest of her third novel, both relevant and audaciously original.