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The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits

Not to be confused with Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, which is stringently assertive in it’s psychoanalytical study of tales, fairy tales, and other folklore. There are some interesting comparisons to the two books.

Heidi Julavits has created a book in three parts. all three parts are twisted and mixed together in alternating chapters. It is the story of Mary Veal (aka: Miriam) who is famous for being a girl who may or may not have been kidnapped, molested, and released two months later. Cast in and around Boston, the book carries literal and symbolic references to Witch Trials and the hysteria that surrounded them.

• The initial segment and many following segments are titled “What might have happened”.
• The second is notes from Dr. Hammer, her psychiatrist who interviews her and attempts to help her after she returns.
• The third is 14 years later, when Mary returns home for the funeral of her mother and tries to put all the pieces back together and find a sign that her dead mother forgives her.

In the opening of the book, we see Mary work her way to a car outside her school where a bored man has been watching the girls smoke cigarettes on numerous days. She climbs into his car and plays on his emotions and undercurrent of desire to get him to play along with her “abduction”. She is well read but average in most every other fashion.

Following throughout are sessions with Dr. Hammer as he unravels her story and becomes obsessed with the fact that she may be lying about her abduction.

By the end of the book i was pretty enthralled. The aptly titled “What may have happened” leave you unsure at the end and analyzing her yourself. looking for a gleam of additional information about the truth behind her fairytale. Is she telling the truth, is she lying, is she telling the truth when she says she is lying? Maybe a litle of all three.

Freudian discussion spatters all of Dr. Hammers notes and make you wonder exactly how much of Freud is actually relevant today, or whether he master was only meant to be a stepping stone in the psychoanalytical world instead of a pillar.

There is an interesting character in this book named Roz. She is an all encompassing Feminist psychiatrist who drove her points home in any way possible. She really shines as an antagonizing pain in the ass. Characters like her remind me of all the things I hate about Feminism. She is not he only Feminist though. The man who “abducts” Mary has a fair amount of talk on the subject too.

All in all a well researched and very well written book