Books like The Folded Clock — picked by fans

I’ll end with a book that started it all for me!

I still remember, in the year 2010, reaching the end of the essay "Goodbye to All That" where the date of publication is noted—1967—and how startled I was to realize something that feels so contemporary and alive had been written decades earlier. As in so much of her work, in this collection Didion offers vivid details from her life and brings her extraordinary powers of analysis to understanding their meaning.

As she once put it herself—in another essay, "Why I Write"—"Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.”

This book is a bible for women in midlife. One of Levy’s ‘living memoirs’, it captures the author’s experience of leaving her marriage at fifty and remaking her life as a writer.

The pose is beautiful: spare and elegant. Importantly, the book explores how it is possible to create a life focused on artistic pursuit, children, and friendship, as opposed to romantic partnership, material wealth, and conservative notions of stability.

I reread it every year to remind myself of what is possible.

The narrator of Chang’s debut novel keeps referencing this project she’s working on, and it just might be the book we’re reading.

The novel brilliantly messes around in the gray area between life and art, author and narrator, truth and fiction—as our narrator, adrift in a new town after a cross-country move, writes as a way to make sense of where she’s been and where she’s going. 

A brilliant blend of narrative and non-fiction, Optic Nerve follows the narrator, an art critic, as she frequents art galleries in Buenos Aires and reflects on the artworks, which act as prisms that refract her own memories and experiences.

This is a book that moves forward by dint of impressions and ekphrastic encounters, eschewing a conventional plot. It explores the interconnections between image and text by incorporating art criticism into the fictional space. 

I love this book because I love imperfect, flawed heroines…and as a fifty-something woman, Nan spoke to me.

How many times do we think of running away—even if just for a bit—but responsibilities and maybe even fear keep us from acting? Not Nan—she takes off, simply leaving an abrupt note for her husband, Martin (which takes place before the book opens). The narrative alternates between letters to Martin and journal entries (Nan spills her thoughts into a turquoise leather tooled journal with a black string fastener and a silver button—I love that detail).

The lyrical descriptions of each place Nan visits are so vivid I felt like I was riding shotgun. And I loved taking that journey with Nan and living in her head, because honestly…being in her head felt a lot like being in my own head, flaws and all. 

Drawing from a year of entries in his running journal and writing beautiful, compressed prose, Gardner explores the relationship between the inner and the outer world of a runner. A veteran of the sport—he’s been at it for decades—and something like a disciple of its spiritual esoterica, he captures those running moments that so many of us struggle to articulate: “One of the reasons you slog through the summer is to be in shape when a day like this appears. A day when you step away from your body and take the body in, this gliding presence no longer yours, though once, you think, it might have been.” Poverty Creek Journal is a meditation on the profundities of a body in motion.

I first met Anne Truitt when we were both guest artists at the Yaddo Colony in upstate NY. Later, we became good friends.

I admired not only her sculptures and paintings but also the three elegant and poignant published journals of an artist’s life. My favorite is the third published Journal, Turn.

Known as a superb artist and sculptor, Turn is Truitt’s third journal revealing the woman and journey of a true artist and unique individual. A husband’s suicide leaving the author and artist to raise three children and pursue her art, creates a unique memoir timeless in the chronicles of the resilience of single women artists.

There are similarities between this novel and mine – the woman at its heart is an American named Lilia, she’s had adventures, and she is taking stock. But then the fascinating differences begin. She is 81, not 57; she’s had marriages and children; above all, the narrative about Lilia is only one layer of the story, as within the book is another book, the diary of a man she had an affair with when very young, and she annotates his revelations with her own. This resonant novel’s strata – like limestone folds, the sediment of a life brought back to the surface – give Lilia, initially hard and sharp, more and more texture as the story unfolds.

This book inspired me as an author and how to write with conviction.

The mental health element of the story was totally relatable, being a former worker in such a setting. I understood the hostility surrounding schizophrenia and the thoughts and feelings of the main character, a young boy who had the condition. 

Skewed thinking and phobias can be isolating, where the sufferer can feel truly alone and this is the overwhelming sense throughout. 

John Updike, writing about golf? Well, why not? This novel, from one of America’s greatest writers, is something of a riff on Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, in a story about a disgraced minister sent off on a sabbatical. He keeps a daily journal, which is what makes up the novel.

Naturally, this being Updike, there are stories about his affairs, his drinking, his family relationships, and more. But there are also wonderful passages about his golf game. Like much of Updike’s work, this book is thought-provoking and an interesting window into the American mind of the 20th century.