The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits

This book was unusual, and I'm not sure if I liked it or not. It is about a woman named Mary who returns to her hometown when her mother dies and grapples with some difficult decisions she made while in high school. The book alternated between the present and Mary's high school years. There are also some excerpts from a fictional book written about her interwoven with these sections.

There was a strong backdrop of Freudian psychotherapy throughout the book. Mary sees a therapist (actually two) while in high school, and much of her present-day life is about closure on her relationships with them. Mary also has a questionable encounter with an older man that is "unpacked" throughout the book.

One thing the author was very good at was providing concise but complete descriptions of Mary's relationships with her family members.

She writes of Mary, "She and Gaby, she'd believed, had a sibling closeness based on the unspoken agreement that they would never be close; this shared understanding of the limits of their relationship made it the easiest relationship Mary shared with anyone in her family."

And in describing her difficulties with her mother, Mary says in therapy, "I sprinkled red food coloring on my underwear and left it in the hamper where my mother would find it. That afternoon I found a box of pads on my bed and a pair of cameo earrings. This is how we communicate, my mother and I."

I'd say that anyone with a strong interest in psychotherapy or analysis should definitely read this, otherwise it's a coin toss on whether you'll like it.