Salon.com > Heidi Julavits http://www.salon.com Thu, 23 May 2013 01:58:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Scheming psychics and hippies http://www.salon.com/2012/08/09/scheming_psychics_and_hippies/ http://www.salon.com/2012/08/09/scheming_psychics_and_hippies/#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12976421 Custom dictates that the actor who narrates an audiobook be a rough demographic match for the main character: same gender, age and regional accent (if any). But what about the emotional tenor of the narration? Shouldn't that match as well? Too often it doesn't. The right fit is, of course, essential when the book in question is written in the first person, like Heidi Julavits' "The Vanishers," which has been masterfully performed by Xe Sands.

The novel is told by Julia Severn, a trainee psychic selected to be the assistant of a powerful, charismatic teacher at a school everyone calls simply the Workshop. Julia's unruly talents end up alienating her teacher. Then she falls seriously ill and must drop out of the program. Is she -- as is claimed by a pair of dubious characters who seek her help in finding a filmmaker known as "the Leni Riefenstahl of France" -- the victim of a psychic attack? Or is she suffering from the lasting effects of her mother's suicide?

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