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Blue Nights

3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 · rating details · 8,615 ratings · 1,278 reviews

From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.

Blue Nights opens on July 26,...more

Hardcover, 208 pages

Published November 1st 2011 by Knopf

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Dec 18, 2011 Claire Johnson rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I should preface this review by saying that I adore Joan Didion's writing. There really is no one better at cataloguing the social chaos and energy that defines a specific shot of history than her. I grew up in the California of the 1960s and 1970s, and if anyone asks me about those years, I point to her. Like most of her readers, I read with such sadness about the death of her husband and daughter, and finished her book The Year of Magical Thinking with such profound respect; she defined unfath...more I should preface this review by saying that I adore Joan Didion's writing. There really is no one better at cataloguing the social chaos and energy that defines a specific shot of history than her. I grew up in the California of the 1960s and 1970s, and if anyone asks me about those years, I point to her. Like most of her readers, I read with such sadness about the death of her husband and daughter, and finished her book The Year of Magical Thinking with such profound respect; she defined unfathomable grief with words.

Blue Nights—her ode to her daughter, Quintana—is also a well-written book, but when I finished it, I slapped it down on my dining room table with a rare sense of irritation. With most books there is you, the reader, who is, hopefully, at the mercy of the author. The author pulls you into their world. Generally, you don't pull them into theirs. When that happens, a book sort of fails. I didn't get pulled into Joan Didion's world. As a parent, I couldn't help but pull her into mine, and the parent in me was snorting in disbelief and sometimes outrage. There is an underlying question throughout the whole book: was she a good enough parent? I can't really answer that question. It's a question that all parents ask themselves frequently, although usually not hand-in-hand with mourning a child's death (and, yes, this is the worst thing that can happen to a parent, bar none). But it's hard not to stare in disbelief when she comments that her daughter was terrified that her father would go first because then Quintana would be under the care and responsibility of her mother. Why wouldn't she be terrified? This is the same woman who felt it was perfectly acceptable to bring her infant to a reporting assignment covering the fall of Saigon. Who thought it appropriate in response to this assignment to go out and buy a bunch of designer clothes. And while this disconnect with reality is a trademark of hers, it might work for her persona as a writer, it fails when we consider her as a parent. As a writer, we might find it privately amusing that she would fly from Honolulu and arrive in Hartford when it was below zero without a sweater. When it’s her kid shivering, then it’s impossible to not judge her. The reader takes a back-seat to the parent.

Didion's detachment has always been her strength. But it's an odd detachment, which is why I think it works so well in her writing. Because it's the detachment of the walking wounded. Someone so battered by reality that detachment is the only way to survive. It's the detachment of someone trying to make sense out of the nonsensical. As a parent (and please don't assume that I think I'm a fantastic parent--merely adequate), I'm listening to her questioning her efficacy as a parent, and I feel like shouting, honey, it's not about you. That's what parenting is. It's not about you. Which seems manifestly unfair because her writing has always been about her and not about her. But you can't carry that sensibility into parenting. I read over these verbal snapshots of her life and marriage, and all I can think of was that Quintana never got to be a child. She’s described as being precocious in this book, but to me it feels like more of a coping mechanism. They may have loved her unquestionably, but the Dunnes went on location, stayed in swanky hotels, wrote their articles, movie scripts, and books, and dragged her along for the ride. She had to become an adult in a child’s body.

So much for the personal issues I had with this book. We come to the writing. The last third of the book is devoted to Didion’s sense that she is losing her ability to write. It's part and parcel of other physical frailties, but although the physical maladies are terrifying, they pale in contrast to the idea that she's losing her truly wonderful way of parsing words. That her style is becoming trite, that an ability to write so clearly about the lack of center is now suffering from not having its own center.

And while I can't say that her writing falls short (the beginning of this book is as masterful a beginning as I've ever read), there is a sense of, um, where's the editor? Her repetition of phrases and concepts that in previous works united a bunch of seemingly disparate events to create a fractured whole, now does seem something of a tic.

Another stylistic choice that seemed to dominate this book was, for want of a better word, product placement. And by that I mean it is never a pair of shoes, a hotel, a sweater; it's Laboutins, the Dorchester, cashmere. Truly, are we supposed to lament that Bendel's is no longer the same? Even people are nothing more than product placement. This actress, this director gave a speech at Quintana's wedding.

Part of the strength of Didion's work written in the 1960s and the 1970s is that the protagonists of her essays were no different than you or I, except that maybe they were part of Manson's family. And although that is a hell of a difference, in her hands it was also not a hell of a difference. A "there but for the grace of God" sensibility dominated. In her current work everyone has a name. A big name. Almost like these larger than life people had no right to up and die. Unlike you and me. Because we don't have names. It's unsettling at first and then becomes annoying. It undercuts the real issue in this book. The loss of her daughter. Does it really matter that she went to school with and had dinner at this restaurant with this Hollywood icon? It doesn't make her passing any more tragic, although there is the hint that she was special because of it. When in reality, she was special because she was so loved.

In the end I certainly would recommend this book because Joan Didion is one of the most thoughtful and fantastic writers of her generation, but Blue Nights doesn't have the strength of The Year of Magical Thinking. I think this is the most personal of her books (for obvious reasons), but it's also one of her weaker books, perhaps the inevitable fall out of the detached finally becoming attached with little to attach to.(less)

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Nov 12, 2011 Melissa rated it 2 of 5 stars

I wrote a review for this & the computer ate it. I haven't the heart to try to rewrite the whole thing. Suffice to say that this book was not as sad as The Year of Magical Thinking although I expected it to be harder to bear. To lose a husband is one thing, but to lose a child far, far worse. Thinking about my son dying makes me literally sick to my stomach. I expected to be cut to bits by this.

I wasn't, which is good for me but bad for the book. The tiny intimate details that made Magical...more

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Nov 10, 2011 Osho rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, psychology

While The Year of Magical Thinking was easy to become absorbed in, and was an excellent evocation of grief, Blue Nights is a better-structured book. In part, this is because Didion is always so meticulous about language and the sequencing of scenes. Here, that very carefulness is subject to scrutiny. If The Year of Magical Thinking is about grief, Blue Nights may be about the defenses against grief, about ways of narrating, remembering, and depicting that subsume the emotional chaos of the exper...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Sukey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: engaging

Blue Nights is Act Two of Joan Didion's personal tragedy. And the second publication not previewed and edited by her late husband, writer/author John Gregory Dunn. Act One, The Year of Magical Thinking, published in 2005, recounts Dunn's unexpected death at the dinner table in 2003. Blue Nights, published in 2011, details the 2005 not-so-unxpected death of Didion's daughter, Quintana Roo, following an extended nightmare of physical and medical mayhem. Both memoirs are searing exposés of loss and...more

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Dec 12, 2011 Deirdre Keating rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

Just when I've sworn off any more loss memoirs (after overindulging all fall)...but it's Joan Didion so this is going on the Christmas wishlist.

ETA: No longer on the wishlist as I devoured it in two sittings. No one is more readable to me than Didion, even here where she is more...more what? More elusive, more indulgent? No. More poetic? Maybe.

I wouldn't recommend this as an introduction to Didion; I imagine it would be a frustrating read. So much is going on here---it is not a memoir, or a book...more

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Oct 13, 2012 Greg rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love how immediate Blue Nights feels. As I read it, I felt Didion sitting beside me, sifting through her own thoughts and memories and trying to make some sense of her life, searching for answers to all of her many questions and ultimately, the question of life and death ("when we talk about mortality we are talking about our children").

Didion's gorgeous prose makes this a quick read, but the sheer intelligence and mental flexibility rewards a slower read. Blue feels like Didion is giving us...more

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Dec 06, 2011 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking was a deeply intelligent, heart-wrenching portrait of what it really felt like to have her husband of 40 years, John Gregory Dunne, die of a massive coronary failure in their Sutton Place living room while she was making dinner. Oh, and they had just got back from the hospital, where their only child, Quintana Roo, lay in coma due to complications from pneumonia. This was in December of 2003, and Magical Thinking came out two years later, and was definitely...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Matt added it

In some ways Blue Nights , the grim companion piece to The Year of Magical Thinking, seems like the book Didion was put on earth to write--why else the long career as unsentimental witness recounting what she's seen without affect or excess? Here she turns her eye on the some of truest subjects of the human experience, the ones we avoid daily every way we can by spreading a fog of delusion around them: age, sickness, loss, and death. Didion writes with clarity and honesty about them all.

In anot...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Wordsmith rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone, Parents and Children Alike

Shelves: death-non-violent, bestsellers, family-saga, favorite-author, health, review-needed, recommended, library-loan, love, non-fiction, memoir-autobiography, mother-n-child, ranking-2012-reads-processing

Review coming...5th in line! Note to self: Do not cast your eyes on or in another written object until one (or more!) item(s) from your backlog of procastination is crossed off. Until then:

Blue Nights is a love letter from Joan Didion to her daughter Quintana Roo. Her faults are laid bare. I'm sure there are many more. Faults have no meaning to love felt. Children don't understand this with their unlived minds. Such is life. She lays her heart out, flayed. Her grieving a language we can feel. A...more

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Nov 22, 2011 Deborah A. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Well, it's probably blasphemy to say this, and I did give this book the highest possible rating, but some of Didion's stylistic methods: the lists, the questions, the coy mingling of abstract and concrete, were showing here. They felt like tricks rather than fluid means of transcending the personal and reaching the universal. I actually got annoyed with the narrator when she couldn't seem to answer her own interminable questions when the answers seemed obvious to me. Of course, if your mother ha...more Well, it's probably blasphemy to say this, and I did give this book the highest possible rating, but some of Didion's stylistic methods: the lists, the questions, the coy mingling of abstract and concrete, were showing here. They felt like tricks rather than fluid means of transcending the personal and reaching the universal. I actually got annoyed with the narrator when she couldn't seem to answer her own interminable questions when the answers seemed obvious to me. Of course, if your mother has chronic migraine, carries a presumptive diagnosis of MS, looks frail, writes about chaos and the meaninglessness of the universe, and your parents take you with them around the world to movie sets and agents' offices, you may well become precocious, feel as if it is your job to take care of them, and develop your own sense that the universe is meaningless and chaotic. Is this really mysterious? You may see the randomness lurking in the choice/adoption fable meant to reassure you that you were fated to be with your adoptive parents. How could you not ask "what if you weren't home when the doctor called to offer me to you," etc., when your mother asks these sorts of questions in her writing all the time? How can Didion not see how much Quintana probably wanted to be a writer like Mom and Dad?
Didion approaches and then darts away from deeper understanding of her daughter's and her own psychology. Some of the montage/collage -- the movement from contemplating her daughter's psychology to her own physical problems of aging felt narcissistic. Can she only think about her daughter empathetically for so long before she has to shift focus to herself? I understand that the larger themes are mortality and the unwillingness to acknowledge the passage of time, etc., etc., but there were still so many moments when I wanted to pin the narrator down to staying in the moment with her daughter before getting back to herself.

Didion also throws around psychiatric diagnoses applied at various times to Quintana as if they explain her but it feels cruel to apply a diagnosis so often used to discredit intense women, and so often lacking in scientific validity -- borderline personality disorder -- to describe her daughter. It doesn't explain at this point, it only discredits. I haven't yet quite gotten to the end of the book but it's still not clear to me what the connection is between these psychiatric diagnoses and her daughter's final physical illness. Maybe Didion is relying on the reader to connect some of these dots, but for some reason this book felt more coy and evasive than her other works. Are we being asked to forgive her? Tell her that whatever happened with her daughter isn't her fault? Or condemn and forgive her at the same time? Is the subject matter still too fraught, too painful, the relationship too unresolved? Am I projecting here my own feelings about my mother and her blindnesses to me? I feel as if I'm being too hard on Didion -- What could be more horrible than losing your husband and your daughter within a few months of one another, in the midst of losing your own physical and cognitive bearings? Didion is brave to even broach these subjects, and even when she's not at the top of her game, she's better than virtually everyone else writing memoir. I relished every word of this book even as I sometimes wanted to shake the narrator. (less)

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Dec 29, 2011 RNOCEAN rated it 2 of 5 stars

"From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.

Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana’s wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. Th...more

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Dec 07, 2012 Ruth rated it 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book more than I did.

I am very sorry poor Joan D's husband died, and then her only child is dead. But, she writes this book in a confusing way, and I'm not sure what to make of it. Even the title phrase, which she tries to explain, is elusive to me.

I learned way more about her life and her daughter in her prior book (the yr of magical thinking). That topic was the sad and sudden death of her husband. This book is about the sad and not sudden death of her daughter, who die...more I wanted to like this book more than I did.

I am very sorry poor Joan D's husband died, and then her only child is dead. But, she writes this book in a confusing way, and I'm not sure what to make of it. Even the title phrase, which she tries to explain, is elusive to me.

I learned way more about her life and her daughter in her prior book (the yr of magical thinking). That topic was the sad and sudden death of her husband. This book is about the sad and not sudden death of her daughter, who died less than two years after Mr. Dunne died. So I should not complain. If your child dies, how are you supposed to make it into a nice, readable tale?

But I was not very thrilled with this book. I don't know how likeable the narrator is. I can't understand if her daughter, named Quitana, was a trunk full of trouble growing up or not. There is mention of diagnosis and some mental problems, but it is not explained.

The daughter is adopted, and I was expecting a more heartfelt quest for parenthood that you commonly hear from adoptive families. This was nothing like that, it seemed to happen on a lark--mentioning they were trying to have a baby (Ms. Didion was in her early thirties or late twenties, I think. She was not too old to conceive by general standards, but nothing is explained.), and then someone who knew a Dr. so and so, who called them, and they went and got the baby.

She does recount the bio family connecting up with her daughter, but there is no emotional expression that colors it. It is factual and clinical and kind of dull. Ms. Didion has regrets about the kind of mother she was, but she does not really get into it, but she seems almost defensive over the "privileged" life she gave her daughter. This is odd, because there are no apologies for the extravagant life style.

And I got annoyed with the life style--she and John live it up on expense accounts, presumably movie companies and publishers. It makes me uncomfortable when perfectly well off people are such sponges. Flying to Hawaii, to Europe, summers in France and so on. If now she wasn't all alone and sad, I might be jealous.

There is this strange bitterness about the house she had in California. She wrote about it enough in the Yr of mag. thinking,here it is again. They sold the house to move to NYC and the buyer flattered their bookish egos and then tore the whole place down and built a new one. It wasn't even a wonderful house, and they had sold it and moved, but J.D. still is bothered by this apparent unfair treatment. I'm not sure what the point is. It seems to be one thing she is clear about that hurt her.

I have read some of JD's other books and I like her style, but in his case, it has its limits. She mentions Quitana's husband,but he does not get one adjective. Was he tall? Was he loud? Was he kind? It is disconcerting she is unwilling to depict him, but instead will recount the patterns of hospital curtains. She will mention where the wedding cake came from many times, it means nothing tome. What designer dress was that? I don't care, your upper class trappings don't resonate.

There are passages with repeated phrases and their cadences don't work for me. The content is often utterly uninteresting, such as a verse from the Eagles' song "Hotel California". There is this thinness to the content overall that the repetition seems to try to cover. An only child of intellectuals is bound to be precocious, and all kids say fascinating things, something Ms. D. seems oblivious to. She repeats the story of Q.'s child hood fear of "the broken man"--it means more to the parents than it does to the kid. It is not exactly bragging, but J.D. seems to think it is some sort of incredible clue to the rare brain of her kid.

I am not sure if her writing this book was anything more than just making some coin. Maybe she got bad advice. I do feel sorry for her, not because she is alone and old, because we all will be old, and everyone is always alone if you really think about it. I feel sorry for her because she seemed to lose her footing in life (happens to everyone eventually) and trying to write about it does not seem to help.t(less)

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Mar 06, 2012 Joanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: from-the-library, memoir, non-fiction, 2012

I wasn't sure that I wanted to read this book. I didn't love The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion's account of her husband's death while their daughter lies comatose, and didn't really want to put myself through the retelling of her daughter's death. After reading Blue Nights I feel like I have a new appreciation for The Year of Magical Thinking, I feel like I get it a little better now.

In Blue Nights, Didion talks about the loss of her daughter but she also talks about her life, her work, her l...more

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Dec 19, 2011 Susan rated it 2 of 5 stars

"Blue Nights" was similar to "The Year of Magical Thinking" in its focus of Didion's memories, her fears, and her feelings of loss of both her husband and her daughter. Especially poignant is the writer's quote, "The fear is for what is still to be lost. You may see nothing still to be lost. Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her." I felt for Didion's loss, and I felt empathy for her realization that her life doesn't hold promise for her the way that it did before the deaths o...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Didion finds, in the tragic loss of her daughter, a mandate to examine the role of memory, cognition and emotional trauma in her own rich life and that of her adopted daughter. It is an emotionally gratifying book for a longtime reader of Didion, whose impeccable style, while turning a clear eye on her subjects, has always served to obscure her inner life. In this book, she speaks of her own "frailty," and how she intuits its transference to her daughter, making this also a meditation on motherh...more

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Feb 14, 2012 Jane added it

This small book fits easily in one hand allowing the reader to hold a tea cup in the other, to put down the tea cup and pull at her hair or pinch her cheek, to read another chapter or two and then to put down both tea cup and small book and walk through the house looking at pictures of her children and her parents and her grandchildren and yes, her nephew and niece. Returning to her chair, the reader finds the small book has not left its spot, has not become a bad dream, as the loss of a child d...more This small book fits easily in one hand allowing the reader to hold a tea cup in the other, to put down the tea cup and pull at her hair or pinch her cheek, to read another chapter or two and then to put down both tea cup and small book and walk through the house looking at pictures of her children and her parents and her grandchildren and yes, her nephew and niece. Returning to her chair, the reader finds the small book has not left its spot, has not become a bad dream, as the loss of a child does not disappear when one awakens.

Didion's pain is so palpable that it springs from the page and forms a tight band around the reader's head, a tightness in her throat. Didion's honesty in describing her utter naivety as a young mother matches that shared only by the closest of friends. Her recognition of her perhaps infrequent insensitivity to her daughter is breathtaking. The description of her response to her daughter's coming death, disbelief changing to belief, is spare, realistic, shattering. One cannot read these short chapters without sharing the pain, the grief. As Didion narrates the gradual slow process by which she came to know, if not accept, Quintana's death, so too does she paint her own unwilling acknowledgment (I cannot say acceptance) of her own mortality.

Yet, like another reviewer, at times I wanted to shake Didion, to ask her to tell me more about Quintana, the beautiful daughter who died so early. I'm sure Quintana has a much richer story that than that told here. When Didion remembers her daughter's including "Brush your teeth, brush your hair, shush I'm working" in her list of Mom's sayings, I want to remind her that she was not the only working mom during the 1970's. When Didion writes, "All adopted children, I am told, fear that they will be abandoned by their adoptive parents as they believe themselves to have been abandoned by their natural," I want to challenge her, to suggest that she has visited one too many therapists, to insist that all of us, not only adoptees, have insecurities.

It is Didion's honesty that encourages me to want to engage her, to share my own experiences, doubts and fears, to argue with her. The title metaphor, blue nights, will stay with me, as will her admission that the mementos she has stored "serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here." Didion's gift to her readers is to remind us to appreciate all of the moments we are given.

Euripides: "What greater grief can there be for mortals than to see their children dead?"(less)

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 4 of 5 stars

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Mar 30, 2013 tina added it

So sad and sparse. This book doesn't flow the way Miracle Thinking did. I'm not sure it should, so that is not a criticism. Initially it seems like it will be about Quintana but it's not. It's more about aging and the inevitable loneliness after loss. It's about fragility, how someone turns around and realizes she is no longer how she seemed. In some ways I wanted to think about Phillip Roth's latest books, but his work has a filthy quality to it entirely absent here. This is something else enti...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Kevin rated it 1 of 5 stars

I liked The Year of Magical Thinking. I hated this. Maybe I am sick of the memoir genre, but the need to try to sum up one's life or experiences into a lyrical narrative drives me bonkers. Life is random. It frequently doesn't make sense. Deal with it. Tell your story, but don't make it a picture.

The praise for this book, even by one of my heroes, Christopher Hitchens, is sickening. I know people who have lost children. If any of them wrote a book, it wouldn't be half as solipsistic as this and...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Johari rated it 2 of 5 stars

It pains me to rate this so low. I love Joan Didion and there were pieces of this book that were absolutely beautiful. The first half was 4 stars. The last half was....nowhere near 4 stars. Her writing always has privileged and pretentious leanings, but normally the beauty of the writing and the depth of the subject matter make it worthwhile. This book felt like a shallow series of reminiscences about Didion's fabulous former life among the young and rich and famous before tragedy struck. The tr...more

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Feb 05, 2013 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I am a fan of Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking." I have mixed feelings about "Blue Nights," Didion's account of the tragic death of her adopted daughter Quintana and meditation on her own decline into old age. The story of the adoption of Quintana, the latter's psychological problems centering to some extent upon fear of abandonment, and the subsequent impact of "being found" by her biological family makes for compelling reading. That Didion was dealt a heavy blow, losing her husband...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars

Didion’s organizing/titular metaphor about aging and loss is a powerfully suggestive (and darkly beautiful) one, and in that sense I was most moved by the first two pages of this slim book. There are moments of real insight and feeling here (about parenting, about our relationships with our children, about time and “life’s most predictable events,” about dreams and possibilities, about memories, etc.), and at its best, Blue Nights finds Didion living in different time dimensions, reaching out fo...more

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Jan 21, 2013 Kim Fay rated it 5 of 5 stars

When Blue Nights came out, I was fortunate to hear Joan Didion speak about it at the Vibiana Theater in L.A. I also bought a copy of the book, which she signed. But I have been hanging onto it, waiting for the time when I would be able to indulge and read it in one sitting. For I find that whenever I start a book by Didion, I don't want to stop. I want to spiral around in her spiraling mind, feel what she feels, until I emerge at the other end, exhausted and thoroughly satisfied. For this, Blue...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, memoir

Joan Didion writes about the loss of her (adult) daughter. One review called this not a memoir of grief but of regret and that certainly fits.

The book is beautiful and austere, so austere it’s almost difficult to read despite the simplicity of the prose. One could argue Didion’s writing is always detached but somehow it feels more than that, like she can’t bear to touch the topic too closely which makes the reader feel quite removed as well (at least this reader). Indeed she never says how Quint...more Joan Didion writes about the loss of her (adult) daughter. One review called this not a memoir of grief but of regret and that certainly fits.

The book is beautiful and austere, so austere it’s almost difficult to read despite the simplicity of the prose. One could argue Didion’s writing is always detached but somehow it feels more than that, like she can’t bear to touch the topic too closely which makes the reader feel quite removed as well (at least this reader). Indeed she never says how Quintana died, which of course sent me to the Google. Interestingly the internet doesn’t know why she died either. A host of diseases are mentioned and I guess at some point Didion mentioned pancreatitis, which is usually caused by alcohol abuse. The pancreatitis seems to be the general consensus, including those close to the family.

This maybe-maybe not alcoholism is another thing Didion dances around. She mentions, early on, that Quintana “drank too much” (never touching the word alcoholic) and says her daughter self-medicated with booze. Also from the book: “In retrospect we all drank more than we needed to drink but this did not occur to any of us in 1966.” Quintana was born in 1966, so she makes the connection without really making it.

Didion does end up mentioning a host of mental illnesses Quintana had but never says “alcoholic” (assuming that is the case, which it seems to be after doing more research on her background). It’s almost like it’s more acceptable to admit mental illness than a substance abuse problem. Granted, this is the author’s private business but she is the one who wrote a book and cloaked the whole thing in mystery. People are inevitably going to want to know what happened. I kept waiting for “the reason” and it never came. I mean, really, a memoir about someone’s death without the cause of death stated?

Anyway, this book was beautifully written but my enjoyment of it all over the map. I loved the first half (probably because I thought everything would tie together/be revealed eventually). Joan and her husband adopted Quintana and her insecurity and lack of preparedness are deeply felt. The adoption came on rather suddenly. In fact I cannot believe how easy the process was. Make friends with doctor. Mention you want kids. He calls after delivering a “beautiful baby” and asks if you want her. You go to hospital, pick up baby. No doubt this played into her insecurity and the fact, by her own admission, they raise Quintana like she’s a doll. She is never treated as a child, not once, ever. This is not a good thing.

There is a lot of name-dropping in this book: people, places, and things. This was particularly pronounced as I didn’t know half the names she was dropping so her grand connections were somewhat lost on me. As one reviewer noted she describes the wedding cake (and its origins – apparently a very fancy kind of cake) like ten times and does not describe Quintana’s husband at all. She also has some rambling diatribe on the nature of privileges that comes across as extremely defensive.

This is a rather long review for a fairly short book. I guess I could’ve shorthanded it by saying the first half deeply moved me but was disappointed that the reader is kept at a distance and in the dark for the duration of the story. Still, an unthinkable situation. (less)

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Jan 07, 2013 Amy rated it 2 of 5 stars

It's incredibly difficult for me to rate this book. Can Ms. Didion write? Why, yes, yes she can. Her writing is spectacularly engrossing. This was a major reason why The Year of Magical Thinking was so powerful for me. The loss and grief of loved ones adds a special element that makes her books a beautiful train wreck; such tragedy, heartache but all we can do is look on with our sad eyes and be thankful her story isn't our own and for a few days, feel especially grateful for the loved ones in o...more

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Dec 16, 2012 Katie Wudel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I adore Joan Didion. I especially enjoyed The Year of Magical Thinking, as I'm sure you did, which is why you're considering reading this. I even traveled to New York to see the excellent stage play of the book, starring Vanessa Redgrave, that Didion discusses here. Didion expressed in that book the very real post-loss pendulum swing from anesthetized helplessness to sloppy emotional revolt as no one has before or since. TYMT inspired me to write my own grief memoir (and I doubt I'm the only one...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Margaret rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have always liked Joan Didion, so even as I found myself taking issue with parts of Blue Nights, I couldn't help defending it. I must have come to it wanting or expecting something quite different, but the result wasn't disappointment. I'd expected this to be a book about the elusive Quintana Roo, the daughter she lost; instead it's a meditation on motherhood, the "muddled impulses of adoption," frailty and aging, and death. "When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children," she...more

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Nov 21, 2012 Rutger rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wanneer in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) een duet uit de opera La Nozze Di Figaro over de binnenplaats van de gevangenis schalt, verzucht de voice-over van Red (Morgan Freeman): “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. (…). I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it.” Muziek is een krachtige manier om emoties op een toehoorder over te brengen, zelfs als hij de tek...more Wanneer in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) een duet uit de opera La Nozze Di Figaro over de binnenplaats van de gevangenis schalt, verzucht de voice-over van Red (Morgan Freeman): “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. (…). I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it.” Muziek is een krachtige manier om emoties op een toehoorder over te brengen, zelfs als hij de tekst niet begrijpt. Maar ook in boeken kun je soms iemands pijn voelen, zonder dat de woorden tot je doordringen. Zelfs als je aandacht even verslapt en je de woorden alleen nog volgt en niet echt leest, brengen het ritme en de woordkeus het verdriet over. Dit is het geval bij Blue Nights van Joan Didion, dat de 77-jarige essayist schreef naar aanleiding van de dood van haar dochter Quintana in 2005.

Quintana stierf vlak voor het uitkomen van The Year of Magical Thinking, een boek over de onverwachte dood van Didions man, de schrijver John Gregory Dunne, en waarvoor ze onder andere de National Book Award voor non-fictie won. Dit was een genadeloos zelfonderzoek (waarin Didion altijd een meester is geweest) naar rouw en het zelfbedrog, oftewel het magische denken dat hiermee gepaard gaat. De titel van haar nieuwste werk verwijst naar de zomeravonden, wanneer de schemering blauw kleurt, het zonnige geluk nog in de lucht hangt en de dag nooit lijkt te eindigen, maar de herfst zich onvermijdelijk aandient. Didion richt zich op de herinneringen van voor de dood van haar man en dochter, de momenten die aan de rouw vooraf gaan, de verhalen die we onszelf vertellen uit angst voor de vergankelijkheid.

Didion en Dunne besloten in 1966 om een kind te adopteren. Ze vernoemden haar naar een gebied in Mexico dat ze ooit op een kaart hadden zien staan: Quintana Roo. Beide schrijvers waren geen natuurlijke ouders en geen gewone mensen: zo waren ze van plan om de baby een paar maanden na haar geboorte mee te nemen op een journalistenreis naar Saigon en vertelden ze haar vanaf het begin eerlijk dat ze geadopteerd was. Quintana bleek zelf ook een ongewoon kind, dat op vijfjarige leeftijd belde met een psychiatrische inrichting om te vragen wat ze moest doen als ze gek zou worden en met de filmstudios van Twentieth Century Fox om te informeren hoe ze beroemd kon worden. Later zou ze met een borderline persoonlijkheidsstoornis gediagnosticeerd worden, een psychische aandoening die nagenoeg niet te behandelen is.

“Wanneer we over sterfelijkheid spreken, spreken we over onze kinderen,” zegt Didion. In haar herinneringen aan Quintana ontdekt ze dat ze nooit echt heeft willen geloven in het vergaan van de tijd. Dit is ook de reden dat ze worstelde met het moederschap: in de ontwikkeling van een kind naar de volwassenheid zie je genadeloos de jaren voorbijgaan. Tegelijkertijd confronteert de kwetsbaarheid van ons kind ons met de zekerheid van de dood. Na het overlijden van de overige gezinsleden blijft Didion alleen achter, worstelend met haar eigen gezondheid.

Didion vertelt dit verhaal in een feilloze stijl die je naar de keel grijpt. In vijfendertig korte hoofdstukken schildert ze treffende beelden, ogenschijnlijk betekenisloze anekdotes vol levenslessen. Quintana’s tatoeage net onder haar schouder die door haar bruidsjurk schijnt, de oude Didion die niet durft op te staan uit een stoel tijdens een toneelrepetitie, de Broken Man die Quintana in haar gedetailleerde kinderdromen achtervolgde. Zoals in haar hele oeuvre zoekt Didion naar antwoorden in de taal en vuurt ze haar zorgvuldig gekozen woorden ritmisch op ons af. Veel zinnen uit Quintana’s jeugd worden in het hele boek herhaald, soms bij elkaar, om de overeenkomst te kunnen proeven. Daarnaast richt ze zich zo nu en dan direct tot de lezer om iets te benadrukken, vraagt ze om even goed te lezen. Het boek staat vol met vragen aan ons en vooral aan zichzelf, vragen die ongelofelijk veel moed vergen.

Zo weet Joan Didion met Blue Nights haar grote ongeluk en verdriet met zichtbare moeite om te zetten in een kwetsbaar en kritisch onderzoek naar ouderschap, vergankelijkheid en zichzelf. Met glorieus resultaat. Ze weet haar pijn te beheersen zonder dat het koud wordt, haar verdriet uit te drukken zonder in sentimentaliteit te vervallen. Het is een ontroerend en leerzaam boek voor ouders en voor kinderen – voor ons allemaal. Didion is terecht kritisch op het idee van levenslust, dat egoïsme en zelfbedrog met zich meebrengt. Maar uiteindelijk inspireert de vitaliteit van haar woorden meer dan dat het ons somber maakt. We laten de schrijver achter in een fragiele staat, zowel fysiek als mentaal. Toch houdt ze haar fysieke therapie vol en probeert ze aan te komen door veel ijs te eten, en blijft ze op zoek naar antwoorden op moeilijke vragen. Laten we hopen dat ze dat nog jaren kan voortzetten.

(Verschenen in NRC Handelsblad)(less)

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Nov 02, 2012 Marcus rated it 5 of 5 stars

‘Several days before Christmas 2003, Joan Didion’s only daughter, Quintana, fell seriously ill. In 2010, Didion marked the sixth anniversary of her daughter’s death. Blue Nights is a shatteringly honest examination of Joan Didion’s life as a mother, a woman and a writer.’

It was with the expectation of infinite sadness I started Blue Nights. I don’t like biographies, at least of the living. Knowing so much, however biased, about someone leaves me arid. But I was compelled after reading Didion’s r...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Paul rated it 2 of 5 stars

I was really looking forward to this since I finished The Year of Magical Thinking. Sadly, the things I didn't like about that book were exaggerated here and the interesting parts were nowhere to be found. In "Magical Thinking" Didion used her own experiences to examine death, grief, and aging in general. Here I didn't find much beyond the personal. Nothing in here helped to shed light on these issues as I might consider them.

My biggest complaint is that this book is actually extremely shallow....more

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About Joan Didion

Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York City. She's best known for her novels and her literary journalism.
Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work.

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Quotes from Blue Nights

“You have your wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember.” — 20 people liked it

“Vanish.
Pass into nothingness: the Keats line that frightened her.
Fade as the blue nights fade, go as the brightness goes.
Go back into the blue.
I myself placed her ashes in the wall.
I myself saw the cathedral doors locked at six.
I know what it is I am now experiencing.
I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.
The fear is not for what is lost.
What is lost is already in the wall.
What is lost is already behind the locked doors.
The fear is for what is still to be lost.
You may see nothing still to be lost.
Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her.” — 18 people liked it

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