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The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion

3.88 · Rating details · 117,617 ratings · 8,947 reviews

From one of America’s most iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

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Hardcover, 227 pages

Published October 4th 2005 by Knopf Publishing Group (first published September 1st 2005)

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Oct 24, 2007 Kim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: readers who don't give up

Recommended to Kim by: Maurice

Shelves: contemporary, holy-shit, essays, for-realz, maurice, rubbernecking

You might think of me as a cynic.

If you’re being kind, that is. I’m the one that says ’Seriously?’ when being told of some tragic event--like someone would actually make up the horrific thing. I’m the one that views the whole process of death--the telling, the grieving, the service of any kind, the ’after’-- as playing out like I’m in a soap opera bubble. Which camera should I look into when I break down again? Strike one against me.

Strike Two: I've never been much of a fan of Joan Didion... I ...more

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May 21, 2007 noisy penguin rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: no one should read this book.

I hated this book. It is the reason I instituted my "100 pages" policy (if it's not promising 100 pages in, I will no longer waste my time on it). So within the 100 pages I did read, all I got from Didion was that she and her husband used to live a fabulous life and they know a lot of famous people. She spoke of the '60s as a time when "everyone" was flying from LA to San Francisco for dinner. Um, no, actually, "everyone" wasn't doing that then and they're not doing it now. Instead of saying "ou ...more

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Nov 29, 2010 Books Ring Mah Bell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: memo-auto-bio, favorites

Disclaimer: Being fresh into the grieving process myself, you may want to skip this review and head onto others. Undoubtedly I'll purge my grief in a review about a book on grief. You've been warned.

Right off the top I will say this for the book: raw, powerful, honest, amazing.
If you have any interest in the grief process, READ THIS BOOK.

The only criticism that I might have is that there's a lot of name dropping. Insert famous names and some fancy locations (Beverly Hills, Malibu), talk about u ...more

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Jan 15, 2014 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014

“It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

description

In four days it will be one year since my father-in-law died in an accidental shooting. He had recently turned 60 and recently celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary. In 18 days it will be four years since my older brother died suddenly in a Back Hawk crash in Germany. He was closing in on his 40th birthday. He was preparing to land.

I had two father-figures i ...more

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May 30, 2007 Dawn rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: No One

Hated it, hated it, hated it- but kept reading with the hope that all my pain and suffering would somehow be worth it in the end. It wasn't. The same self-pitying, whiney, depressing, self-important sentiments are basically repeated over and over again only with different words. Joan Didion can obviously write well, but she should have left this cathartic piece in her closet. And I'm not averse to reading novels that deal with grief. This one was just way too self-indulgent and redundant for me. ...more

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Nov 28, 2014 Debbie "DJ" rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

This is a hard book for me to review, as I know my own personal experience will be foremost. A big thank you to a wonderful friend who sent this to me after the loss of my own partner three weeks ago. So yes, this book is about grief and loss. It is Didion's own personal journey after the loss of her husband. The first lines in her memoir begin...
"Life changes fast.
Life changes in an instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity."
Those words resonated with This is a hard book for me to review, as I know my own personal experience will be foremost. A big thank you to a wonderful friend who sent this to me after the loss of my own partner three weeks ago. So yes, this book is about grief and loss. It is Didion's own personal journey after the loss of her husband. The first lines in her memoir begin...
"Life changes fast.
Life changes in an instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity."
Those words resonated with me profoundly. She goes on to describe that grief is very different than loss. Loss can be the death of someone very close which causes sadness, pain, loneliness, etc., but still there is a distance. Still there is an ability to plan and remember things. Grief however is different, as it has no distance. She describes grief as the feeling of waves of distress, shortness of breath, and loss of memory, to name a few. I cannot say enough about how comforting that was for me. Not only did her words help me understand what was happening to me now, but also what I may experience in the future. While everyone responds to grief differently, there are some general "truisms." One's that Didion has found not only from personal experience, but research as well. I was reminded of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and her book on the five stages of death. What may seem the normal progression of feelings are often felt in no particular order or time.

I had never read Joan Didion before, so I did a little research on her writing. She was born way before social media, and the tell-all confessional types of writing seen today. When she wrote this in 2005, critics accused her of voyeurism. The experience of mourning was still believed to be private, and most thought it should remain that way. I find it interesting that this is the only piece I found missing from parts of her memoir.

In much of this book she has written more of the facts of her experience than her feelings. To think, 10 years ago this was seen as voyeurism? And yet, in keeping my own journal, I notice much of it is a recording of facts. Maybe in some ways one's emotions shut down as the shock to the body is foremost. I can only wonder in Didion's case, this coupled with the times in which she wrote, how explosive such details must have been.

I cannot help but feel Didion helped pave the way for many authors to reveal deeper emotions. For me, this sometimes factual account did not take away from the experience that is this book.

I highly recommend this to anyone who is going through a grieving process, or is interested in the affects grieving produces. ...more

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Jul 26, 2017 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, autobiography, american-21st-c, self-help

I have only experienced the death of a few friends and my grandparents, so I cannot say that the grief that Joan Didion describes has ever been my own. However, her loss of her husband John from a sudden heart attack while simultaneously her daughter Quintana was fighting for her life talked to me very deeply. This is not a feel good, self-help book. It is a heartbreaking and yet cathartic reliving of her first year as a widow. I admit to wetting the pages with a few tears as I read the entire b ...more

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Aug 05, 2008 Greg rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, girls-girls-girls

Like Johnny Rotten said during their last (in the universe where they never would re-form again in the mid-90's) show, "Do you ever feel like you've been cheated?"
I do Johnny, I do.
I feel cheated by this book. I bought it because it cost me a dollar. I wasn't interested in it that much. I finally picked it up to read because I wanted to write a review about how pathetic and whiny it was. I thought I'd say something about how now that baby-boomers are starting to kick the bucket they want a fuc Like Johnny Rotten said during their last (in the universe where they never would re-form again in the mid-90's) show, "Do you ever feel like you've been cheated?"
I do Johnny, I do.
I feel cheated by this book. I bought it because it cost me a dollar. I wasn't interested in it that much. I finally picked it up to read because I wanted to write a review about how pathetic and whiny it was. I thought I'd say something about how now that baby-boomers are starting to kick the bucket they want a fucking monopoly on death too, as if they invented grieving and no one before them could have possibly grieved like they do. Or maybe point out that we really don't need another memoir about someone dying and the way that the surviving family member found some shallow platitude to be true and now feels the need to share it. (i.e., "Everyone said life goes on, but I had to cry for awhile and then write a three hundred page book making it seem like I was the first person in the history of the whole world to have a parent die before realizing that 'hey it's true', and life does go on especially with the nice advance I got from the book deal. Thank you Random House!!")
But no, I don't get to attack Joan Didion. And part of me so wanted to. Instead of finding her whiny, or annoying, or exploitive or whatever I find that I have quite a bit of respect for her.
Other's apparently have had trouble with some of the name dropping that Didion does. Yes she does a lot of name dropping, her and her late husbands friends happen to be house-hold names (if you're household is bookish, maybe yours isn't, and there is nothing wrong with that). And maybe she does name drop the names of expensive hotels and restaurants she normally at in with her John Gregory Dunne, and maybe some people would rather have elaborate descriptions of the decor of these places then her just saying she ate there, or details about what so-and-so said at her husbands funeral, and not just that he or she spoke at it. But that's missing the point and if she had done that I would have been or so happy because I'd be writing a review right now about the banality of memoirs and their narcissistic egoism that only serves to make the author and publisher some dollars.
Instead Didion is really investigating and putting to paper the way that memory and perception work under the duress of grief. The snapshots of memory of a loved one don't necessarily contain any details about the table clothes of a favorite restaurant, but the place itself, it's name where it was located is a memory land mine of the deceased, waiting to go off and spiral out to other memories at it's mere mention.
This book deals with the irrational element of grief so well. It captures the mundane little things that can emotionally paralyze a person, and it's written from that place which our society would rather not acknowledge and that people should 'just get over', and there is no happy ending to the book, there is no climatic cathartic moment.
I've lost where I was going I think. Oh well. ...more

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Jan 30, 2014 Orsodimondo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: americana, memoir

ANCHE PIÙ CHE UN GIORNO DI PIÙ
Quando terminò la cerimonia ci recammo nella villetta di Pebble Beach. C’erano degli stuzzichini, dello champagne, una terrazza aperta sul Pacifico, una cosa molto semplice. Per la luna di miele passammo qualche notte in bungalow del ranch San Ysidro di Montecito e poi, annoiati, fuggimmo al Beverly Hills Hotel.

Ce la farà una persona che scrive queste cose, con questo tono, ce la farà a trasmettere il suo dolore, il senso della sua perdita, a risultare empatica…?

description

J ...more

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Sep 30, 2012 Jason Koivu rated it really liked it · review of another edition

To call Joan Didion cold or even heartless - true as it may be in the light of The Year of Magical Thinking, this monument to the analytical dissection of grief - is itself a cold and heartless condemnation. We all grieve in our own way. This is hers.

After losing numerous family members suddenly and too soon, Didion then lost her husband and daughter within the span of a year. This book is her cathartic contemplation of that loss.

Heartrending, yes occasionally. Heartwarming, no never. Didion's ...more

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May 26, 2013 Julie Ehlers rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: books-that-are-awesome, memoir-and-autobiography

I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to write about this book. This is, without a doubt, the perfect book about having your husband die suddenly of a massive heart attack while your daughter is in the hospital in a coma, about to begin her own death-defying medical struggle (one she eventually loses, although that’s outside the scope of this particular book). I thought this memoir was so perfect that it’s hard for me to understand any of the criticisms of it. Are the critics saying there’s only I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to write about this book. This is, without a doubt, the perfect book about having your husband die suddenly of a massive heart attack while your daughter is in the hospital in a coma, about to begin her own death-defying medical struggle (one she eventually loses, although that’s outside the scope of this particular book). I thought this memoir was so perfect that it’s hard for me to understand any of the criticisms of it. Are the critics saying there’s only one way to grieve, and Joan Didion is doing it wrong? Or that there’s only one way to write about grieving, and Joan Didion is doing that wrong?

If you’ve ever grieved the loss of anyone, I don’t see how you can hold either of these opinions. Grief does not follow some straight line, where you’re devastated and then day by day you’re less devastated, until one day you’re fine. As this book makes clear, grief is sporadic and unpredictable. It ebbs and flows. There’s nothing logical about it, and trying to impose logic isn't going to help you at all. And so, Joan Didion takes a cab home from the hospital after the death of her husband John, and her first thought is that she really needs to discuss the situation with John. She initially doesn’t want people to know about his death, because it might ruin his chances of coming back. With both her daughter and her husband, she goes over situations again and again, as if by doing so she could somehow change what has already happened. She moves back to Los Angeles to be with her daughter during her latest hospital stay, but finds the streets so full of memories that she must devise careful routes that don’t lead her past any troubling locations that might leave her useless for the rest of the day. She cries to her doctor that she “just can’t see the upside” to the situation. If all of this sounds grim, it is. Of course it is. But perfect.

There seem to be two main criticisms of this book. One is that Joan Didion is ice-cold, standoffish, and unfeeling. She certainly seems this way sometimes: At the time of her husband’s death, the social worker assigned to her calls her “a pretty cool customer.” Significantly, though, Joan wonders what an “uncool customer” would be allowed to do: “Break down? Require sedation? Scream?” Joan wonders this not with judgment, but clearly with a kind of envy: Just because she doesn’t do these things doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to.

Fittingly, then, the other criticism I’ve seen is that Joan is too self-pitying. Joan addresses this in the book as well. We abhor self-pity in our culture, but, as she points out, if you’ve been through a traumatic experience over which you have no control, self-pity is a perfectly normal response. And it is! So I guess the truth is, in this book, Joan Didion is both self-pitying and a “cool customer.” In this book you see quite clearly the struggle of someone who’s kept things under control for years and now finds, late in life, that nothing at all is under her control. How it could be written any other way is beyond me.
...more

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Dec 18, 2007 Kate rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction, biographies-and-memoirs, the-100-in-2007

Joan Didion's daughter Quintana fell gravely ill and was hospitalized with a serious infection. She was placed in a medical coma and put on life support. Only weeks later, Joan's husband, John Dunne, was speaking with her from their living room after visiting their daughter in the hospital, stopped mid-sentence and keeled over dead on the floor of a massive coronary. Four weeks later, Quintana pulled through and revived, but only two months after that, she collapsed from a massive brain hematoma Joan Didion's daughter Quintana fell gravely ill and was hospitalized with a serious infection. She was placed in a medical coma and put on life support. Only weeks later, Joan's husband, John Dunne, was speaking with her from their living room after visiting their daughter in the hospital, stopped mid-sentence and keeled over dead on the floor of a massive coronary. Four weeks later, Quintana pulled through and revived, but only two months after that, she collapsed from a massive brain hematoma.

Joan Didion documented this year in this book, which I think I heard about on NPR or somewhere, I'm not entirely sure. I know you're all going to hate me for kicking the widow when she's down, but this book was a lot less than I expected. I got through it, but I really thought it would be more about her feelings. Instead, Didion did a lot of research on grief and puts many of her findings in the book. She spends a lot of time analyzing the way things are and trying to figure out if she's behaving in a way that seems "normal" for your "average widow."

I read a review on Amazon.com that calls Joan Didion's writing as "cool" and perhaps lacking emotion, and I felt that way about this book. The most moving passage in the whole book was one in which she states that she realized she was in denial when she cleaned out her husband's closets, but couldn't get rid of his shoes because he would need them when he got back. I thought to myself, "well, now we're getting somewhere", but perhaps she didn't want to share where those painful thoughts led, because there was no indication that she picked the shoes up and flung them at the walls while sobbing in rage. And I wanted her to. I wanted her to be angry at God and everyone for putting her in this terrible situation with her husband's death and her daughter's serious illnesses. But instead, she seemed rather detached. Maybe she didn't want to share those feelings, but if that were so, she shouldn't have written a book purporting to be about that very topic. I found this book to be tremendously disappointing.
...more

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Apr 06, 2017 Fabian rated it liked it · review of another edition

Very interesting document which heavily dotes upon pain, grief, death. Basically, megapersonal, deep, sad stuff revealed to us... for what purpose? To observe, I guess. Bear witness. Some grief SHOULD be shared... Because....? In order to...? Diminish it? I guess it must this: to ultimately give it meaning: to cash in, when the light of life has gone out...

Let a prose powerhouse not go gently into the night. Much must be said and articulated masterfully (entwining ever so gracefully the clinical ...more

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Jul 20, 2007 Sara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"you sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. the question of self-pity."

i picked up this book and read it knowing nothing more than those two short lines. those two lines which become the refrain of the memoir.

i think i must have been drawn to it intuitively, i needed to read this book when i did. didion's memoir records her thoughts, feelings and actions during the year following her husband's death and her daughter's near-death hospitalizations (i learned later that after the book wa ...more

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Feb 28, 2016 Lynne King rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016-books-to-be-read, a-must-to-read

Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of “waves”.

I cannot remember when I was last so moved by a book. It covers a sad subject, that of death with the subsequent grief and mourning periods but it amazed me with its lucidity of a woman who wrote this book a year after her husband’s dea Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of “waves”.

I cannot remember when I was last so moved by a book. It covers a sad subject, that of death with the subsequent grief and mourning periods but it amazed me with its lucidity of a woman who wrote this book a year after her husband’s death. In fact I was not going to bother writing a review but then my mind took over unfortunately.

I empathised with the author because my husband John died nearly two years ago. I kept a diary after his death and reading it now I realize that I was acting in a very strange way. I became very critical of couples who stayed together because they didn’t love their spouse but they were terrified of a future on their own. I also found that I became more sensitive to people who were pained and probably in a way, John’s death which was dreadful for me, was even more dreadful for him. He had gone. He could not return. And this is where Joan Didion magnificently displays her thoughts on how she felt when her husband John of nearly forty years died of a massive heart attack whilst they were having dinner in New York. Her writing is similar to a dream sequence. How could this have happened? Could she have prevented it? And then he was, as she believed, going to return to her. She refused to give her husband’s shoes away. He would need them for the return. She could accept his going with the funeral but then she was asked whether she could donate his organs. She reflected on this but believed that as he was not hooked up to a life support system when he arrived at the hospital that was not possible; obviously they wanted John’s eyes; the beautiful eyes of her husband.

In parallel with this dreadful situation, her daughter Quintana had fallen ill with what was initially believed to be flu, then pneumonia and then she went into complete septic shock. This happened a week or so before the unexpected death of Joan’s husband. But then we gradually learn that he had continual cardiac problems and he appeared to be aware that his own death was imminent.

Nevertheless, with the aftermath of grief, one wonders, what is grief and I can only assume that it is the initial part of mourning. Joan, a year later, realises that her behaviour had been odd and I believe is coming to terms with her loss. This book was published in 2005, a year after her husband’s death and I hope that she has come to terms with this and is fine. Memories will always be there but life continues. What other choice is there? Suicide. So easy to do but it can nevertheless be brutal. I was always so fascinated with Seneca’s suicide.

After a brief interrogation, Seneca was told to end his own life, which he did only with great difficulty. He severed his arteries, but he was so old and emaciated that the blood hardly escaped; so he asked for the hemlock that he had stashed away for just that purpose, but that had little effect either. He died only when his slaves carried him into a hot bath and he suffocated in the steam.

Joan’s daughter Quintana recovered but then became seriously ill a few months afterwards and so life continued with its anguish. Joan was left with the thought that she was there during her daughter’s illness but she would soon have to let go as Quintana had recently married. And what was Joan going to do with her life. I still have the same problem.

And the book ends beautifully:

…You have to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He [John] told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that.

I had to look this up about the sparrow. I had no idea that it was a hymn and that God continues to watch over us. I like that. It was an appropriate ending to an absolutely mesmerising and wonderful book, not read once but three times. Am I religious? Not in the past but my thoughts are indeed changing.
...more

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Jul 02, 2010 TK421 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: essays-auto-bio-memoir

I am not the type of person that cries at funerals. I find crying at a funeral as constructive as trying to stop a raging river with a few paper towels and a bag of sand, nothing is achieved. Find me not callous, for I am sensitive to the recently departed and their family. It's just that...I don't know...I know there is nothing that can be done to bring back that person. Rereading the above really makes me sound like an ass so let me try it another way: death is something we all have to accept; I am not the type of person that cries at funerals. I find crying at a funeral as constructive as trying to stop a raging river with a few paper towels and a bag of sand, nothing is achieved. Find me not callous, for I am sensitive to the recently departed and their family. It's just that...I don't know...I know there is nothing that can be done to bring back that person. Rereading the above really makes me sound like an ass so let me try it another way: death is something we all have to accept; my acceptance of death comes more easily than it does for others.

Take Didion for example. Here we have a very educated woman who foggily ambles through the year following her husband's (John Gregory Dunne) death. John died of a severe infarction. He had a long history of heart issues. He knew this was the way he was going to die. But even with all this evidence, his personal testimony, Didion finds the death of her husband shocking, as if she were blindsided. (I’ll grant that no one wants to be in mid-conversation with someone when they die.) Now stop cursing me, let me continue. John’s death in-and-of-itself does not make this story compelling. Quintana, John and Didion’s daughter, and her sickness is what makes this story compelling. You see, we are all going to die. Husbands will have to bury wives, and wives will have to bury husbands. That’s life. But none of us ever want to experience having to bury a child. And the way that Didion structures her story allows her to think she is grieving for her husband, when, in reality, she is telling their story to mask the fact that she is scared shitless about losing her daughter.

You see, Didion does a great job of recounting the great love her and John shared for almost forty years. But some of the details that she gives the reader really only show that we (the readers) will never know what it was like to live a life with John. We’ll never know what it feels like to get a free ticket on the Concorde; we’ll never know what it’s like to get free tickets from the NBA commissioner; basically, we’ll never know what it was like to live a life of affluence and prestige. But, even without ever knowing this aspect of her life, we will all more than likely at some point fear for our child, which is the bridge that connects us to Didion. During the chaotic (brilliant narration, stylistic technique) timelines and temporal displacements via vortexes, Didion is unable to mask the fear she has of losing her only child. Unfortunately, Didion also realizes that this year of magical thinking is less about her husband and more about her daughter and closes the door for us readers over and over again just as we are about to get a real true glimpse into Didion’s grief. You see, Didion was able to deal with her husband’s death; what she was unable to deal with was the possibility of losing her child.

But even with the absence of these concrete feelings, and the insertion of insights from countless psychiatrists and research papers about grief, the story works. Didion understands that she might be able to hide from the reader, allow for what information is passed-along to us, as long as she is able to stay one step in front of her feelings. Fortunately for us, grief and confusion and frustration and anger and misery know no boundaries. What is never said on the written page is said with infinite detail in the between spaces of events and conversations within the story. The year of which Didion chronicles is truly heart-wrenching; I’m pretty sure I would not be able to cope as well as she did. But it is also full of promise, redemptions, and hope.

This is a beautiful and tragic story, one that is sure to become a classic concerning death and the grieving process.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
...more

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Sep 08, 2017 Helene Jeppesen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

If I had to describe this book with one word, it would have to be 'impactful'. If you only read one book this year, read this book!

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Apr 17, 2018 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018

Ever incisive, as well as ever restrained, Didion examines with great care the events of her daily life during the year after her husband’s death. Out of a vast array of medical literature, both contemporary and traditional, she composes what amounts to be a straightforward but powerful argument: American society wrongly compels its members to gloss over the shock of a loved one’s death and deny or conceal the lingering pain of their loss. Didion’s polished prose and measured pacing at first gla ...more

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Feb 28, 2016 Duane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016-book-challenge, memoir, non-fiction, national-book-award, reviewed-books, rated-books, 21st-century

"You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends". Didion uses this statement throughout the book, and this is a statement, or some varied version of it, that has touched or may touch many of us at some point in time. The thought of it; we suppress it, bury it just out of view of our consciousness, but we know it's there, that we may have to face it head on someday.

That's what Joan Didion does in this book when she is faced with her husbands sudden death. This is how she existed, how she wen ...more

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Aug 15, 2007 Diane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs, grief

There were many beautiful and moving passages in this book, but there are also some tedious aspects. I feel like a brute for criticizing what is essentially Didion's grief diary after her husband died, but some complaints have to be made. Didion gets too bogged down in the hours and days and minutiae of her husband's autopsy report. Also, parts felt like an academic paper because she kept quoting medical studies -- all part of the attempt to make sense of the autopsy.

Those kinds of details are ...more

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May 14, 2018 da AL rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books, non-ficition-literary

Couldn't finish -- too sad. I know, I know, we all die. But this is where I could have used a lot more breast beating, more not so clinical stuff. This is a good argument for why fiction is essential, how it gives context & color...

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Nov 19, 2009 Charlie rated it did not like it · review of another edition

'I hadn’t been able to think of food for days, so I had sent Higgins out for an hors d’oeuvres platter from Café Provencal. I was nibbling brie and beluga caviar on the deck, watching the sun set over the New York skyline and wondering how things could get any worse when Higgins brought me the phone. It was Gary.
My stomach lurched. Sequoia had collapsed at the bus terminal and been rushed to the emergency room, but there was no word as to what was wrong with her. I had to get to Los Angeles as q 'I hadn’t been able to think of food for days, so I had sent Higgins out for an hors d’oeuvres platter from Café Provencal. I was nibbling brie and beluga caviar on the deck, watching the sun set over the New York skyline and wondering how things could get any worse when Higgins brought me the phone. It was Gary.
My stomach lurched. Sequoia had collapsed at the bus terminal and been rushed to the emergency room, but there was no word as to what was wrong with her. I had to get to Los Angeles as quickly as possible, but first I had to find suitable accommodations. I called my close friend, Academy Award nominated film director Gérard Lupin.
“Gérard,” I said, overemphasizing the accent mark as he prefers, “Sequoia has fallen ill! I need to borrow your chateau for a few weeks while she’s in the hospital.”
“But of course, Jane,” he said. “You’ve already lost so much. You know, I once said to Jim, may he rest in peace, ‘Jim, you’re inarguably one of the most masterful writers of the 20th Century.’ And he said to me, ‘Yes, Gérard. I am. Second only to Jane, perhaps. I am truly blessed to have found someone as wonderful as her.’”
He paused, reminiscing. Then he spoke again, his voice thick with emotion. “I’m shooting with Sir Anthony Hopkins in Luxembourg (he says hello), but I will do anything I can to help.” He cleared his throat. “But what is Sequoia doing in France?”
“The California chateau, at the vineyard,” I said.
“Ah, of course,” he said sadly.'
That’s an excerpt from my upcoming Joan Didion parody, working title: “The Year of Entitled Thinking”. You may have correctly inferred from the tone that I didn’t much enjoy The Year of Magical Thinking. According to a friend who was able to generate a surprising amount of outrage in response to my disdain, this is because I am “not an adult”, but in speaking with her and reflecting on it for a few days, I think I’ve come to a somewhat more nuanced understanding of my viewpoint.
To begin with, this book is the very definition (by my standard, anyway) of creative non-fiction. Didion tells a very personal story entirely from her own perspective. In fact, the story is really about her perspective, her grief and corresponding inability to rationally accept that John is gone and won’t ever be coming back. She even goes so far as to underscore the extreme subjectivity of the narrative by pointing out a few times where her recollection of events explicitly differs from that of some of the other players. She does, on the other hand, also try to universalize it by citing experts/psychological studies on the grieving process and juxtaposing the information with her own experience, almost as if to say, “This happens to everyone, even Joan Fucking Didion .” It’s certainly interesting to think that this state of grief-stricken irrationality is so commonplace as to be almost scientifically quantifiable, although I’m taking her word for it. The narrative itself seems somewhat disjointed at parts, with Didion repeating herself or not making herself entirely clear, but I think that’s intentional, to better bring the reader into line with her state of mind at the time.
Thereupon sitteth, on an ostentatious, jewel-encrusted throne, my problem with the book, I think. Didion’s a great writer. She almost compels the reader to empathize with her, not just her emotions, but the state of temporary, borderline insanity she finds herself in. I really feel like I have a good idea of who Joan Didion is as a person, or at least who Joan Didion wants me to think she is, and that would seem to be a guiding purpose of autobiographical creative non-fiction. I have sympathy for her, especially having discovered that Quintana also passed away right before the book was published. But I don’t think I like her very much.
This is subjective, obviously. I got the impression that Didion is something of a literary star, inasmuch as such a thing exists any more. From whom did I get that impression? From Joan Fucking Didion, that’s who. I don’t know how to explain it better. I think if she had referred to herself entirely in the third person throughout: “Important Author Joan Didion didn’t have an appetite,” it would have fit my interpretation of her general tone. She name-drops in a way that I find fairly inappropriate given the context. She creates an image of a person who’s certainly living far more comfortably than anyone I know, and I find it difficult to muster that much sympathy. I’m sure there are at least three-billion people on the planet who’d trade places with Joan Didion in a heartbeat, even given these tragic circumstances, because it would mean that they weren’t going to starve or die of malaria or have their arms cut off by a roving gang of soldiers. Is that an unfair standard to hold this story to? Of course it is. But I found it to be fairly self-indulgent and self-reverential. And the fact that she seems to have anticipated that I might react this way and told me that she would have felt the same way at my age, but that her younger self and I are both wrong only strengthens my conviction. Who knows, maybe I’ll understand better when I’m an Old.
I don’t deny that Didion is a talented writer, but she seems to know it too and take herself way too seriously as a result. That is my perspective. ...more

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Apr 13, 2014 Debra rated it liked it · review of another edition

3 Stars. I heard a lot of hype about this book prior to reading it and by the reviews I see that People either really liked it or disliked. I think I am in the middle. I find it very hard to rate someone's grief and story of their year since the loss of a loved one (her husband). Joan Didion's memoir opens with her daughter being ill with pneumonia and being in the hospital. After deciding to eat at home, she begins to make dinner and realizes that her husband is not longer talking to her. After ...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Alex rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

This is the second book my wife has recommended to me about people whose spouses die. If I'm found dead please deliver this review to the police.

There's a clinical feel about it. Not accidentally: Didion goes out of her way to cite research on the effects of grief. She analyzes it. You can feel her standing back from it, trying desperately to understand it. It doesn't engage in the despair of About Alice. This is how Didion, not our mushiest writer but one of our best, approaches the world: she ...more

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Jun 21, 2007 Simeon Berry rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, non-fiction, literary, literary-read, non-fiction-read

I also thought this book was tremendously overrated. In the past, I loved Didion because she was a great stylist and a brilliant structuralist. The title essay of The White Album is probably the best-written essay of all time in my book, followed by F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Crack-up" and Charles Bowden's "Torch Song." She has the ability to analyze the personal politics of narrative, and to disclose just how weird and singular her brain is without even a trace of pity or sentimentality. The Wh ...more

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Dec 06, 2017 Ammar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: female-authors, read-in-2017

This book of nonfiction .. a sort of widow grief memoir.. written by a living legend who is a master narrative teller.

The losing of her husband the writer John Gregory Dunne over dinner, a heart attack.. one moment you are here and the next you are gone. The haze and confusion.. the ambulance and the paramedics... the hospital and morgue.

Then to make things worse.. her only daughter Quintana slipped into a septic shock.. after a bout of flu that turned into a double pneumonia. In this book Joan ...more

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Jan 09, 2008 Tung rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs

A National Book Award-winner, this book is Didion’s personal memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Dunne. Didion lays out her thought processes and emotions and struggle for normalcy after Dunne passes away suddenly one night at the dinner table from a heart problem. I didn’t find this book nearly as good as the hype would lead me to believe. The NY Times review called it an "indelible portrait of loss and grief." The NY Review of Books said "I can’t imagine dying w A National Book Award-winner, this book is Didion’s personal memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Dunne. Didion lays out her thought processes and emotions and struggle for normalcy after Dunne passes away suddenly one night at the dinner table from a heart problem. I didn’t find this book nearly as good as the hype would lead me to believe. The NY Times review called it an "indelible portrait of loss and grief." The NY Review of Books said "I can’t imagine dying without this book." For me, it earned none of the preceding words of praise. Books on grief have been done much better, including one referenced multiple times throughout Didion’s book (A Grief Observed by CS Lewis is far superior). I am absolutely convinced that the only reason Didion’s book received such notably positive press was because she and her husband were good friends with all these reviewers and the rest of the literary community, having bonded with these people at dinner parties on the Upper East Side in smoking jackets with martinis and cigars; Didion and Dunne were part of the NYC writing establishment Didion’s prose throughout is tight and reminiscent of early Vonnegut (his self-referencing style, not his humor), but there is an emotional distance in her writing. She quotes numerous studies on grief throughout the book, having spent the months following the tragedy not only grieving but studying grief. But the research studies don’t serve to illuminate her grief; they serve to distance us from her grief. Secondly, Didion lived a very upper-crust NY life, and the way she describes the events she will miss doing (dining at Morton’s with her husband, walking on the Jardin du Ranelagh in Paris with her husband, skipping the Monet exhibit to dine at Conti’s with her husband) further distances me from Didion’s grief. Personally, I don’t find rich people experiencing tragedy as tragic as I would find average people experiencing tragedy. I found this too emotionally detached to recommend it. ...more

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Dec 26, 2018 Roula rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Μιλωντας για αυτο το βιβλιο αρχικα θα ελεγα οτι για μενα ειναι σαν εκεινο το επεισοδιο στα φιλαρακια που ο Τζοι ελεγε οτι οταν εφτανε σε ενα τρομακτικο σημειο ενος βιβλιου,το εβαζε στην καταψυξη για να μην αντιμετωπισει τη συνεχεια.καπως ετσι ειναι η δικη μου σχεση με αυτο το βιβλιο.πρεπει να το εχω στη βιβλιοθηκη μου γυρω στα 10 χρονια και να το εχω ξεκινησει 3-4 φορες και καθε φορα να το βαζω στην ακρη.ο λογος δεν ειναι οτι δεν μου αρεσε.καθε αλλο. Η γραφη της Didion με συνεπηρε απο τις πρωτες Μιλωντας για αυτο το βιβλιο αρχικα θα ελεγα οτι για μενα ειναι σαν εκεινο το επεισοδιο στα φιλαρακια που ο Τζοι ελεγε οτι οταν εφτανε σε ενα τρομακτικο σημειο ενος βιβλιου,το εβαζε στην καταψυξη για να μην αντιμετωπισει τη συνεχεια.καπως ετσι ειναι η δικη μου σχεση με αυτο το βιβλιο.πρεπει να το εχω στη βιβλιοθηκη μου γυρω στα 10 χρονια και να το εχω ξεκινησει 3-4 φορες και καθε φορα να το βαζω στην ακρη.ο λογος δεν ειναι οτι δεν μου αρεσε.καθε αλλο. Η γραφη της Didion με συνεπηρε απο τις πρωτες σελιδες.ειναι το θεμα του που με εκανε ολες τις φορες που το ξεκινουσα να μην το αντεχω και να λεω "ας το αφησω για μια αλλη φαση της ζωης μου"."οταν θα ειμαι πιο δυνατη, πιο χαρουμενη, πιο ευαλωτη , πιο λυπημενη, πιο...".επισης κανω παρενθεση εδω και σημειωνω οτι το βιβλιο αυτο το ανακαλυψα απο την ηθοποιο Michelle Williams που οταν ειχε ερωτηθει σε καποια συνεντευξη αν υπηρξε καποιο βιβλιο που την βοηθησε να αντιμετωπισει το θανατο του Heath Ledger ειχε πει αυτο.φυσικα μου δημιουργησε κατευθειαν την περιεργεια να το διαβασω.το βιβλιο αυτο λοιπον μιλα για το πως μια γυναικα κυριολεκτικα μεσα σε μια στιγμη χανει τα παντα.ειναι μια απο αυτες τις περιπτωσεις που δεν ξερεις αν πρεπει να γελάσεις ή να κλαψεις ή απλα να μην πιστεψεις πως ενας ανθρωπος μπορει να ειναι τοσο ατυχος.η Didion λοιπον χανει τον επι 40 χρονια αντρα της σε μια στιγμη και ενω η κορη τους βρισκεται στην εντατικη υστερα απο ενα απλο κρυωμα που εξελιχθηκε πολυ πολυ ασχημα..πώς λοιπον ενας ανθρωπος αντιμετωπιζει κατι τετοιο? Πώς μαθαινει να ζει ξανα με εναν τελειως διαφορετικο τροπο υστερα απο 40 χρονια? Πώς μαθαινει να αφηνει το πιο σημαντικο προσωπο στη ζωη του πισω και να προχωρα μπροστα? Το βιβλιο αυτο λοιπον με συνεπηρε καθως ειναι μια ωμη καταγραφη -εως και κυνικη - των οσων ακολουθουν την απωλεια.γιατι λιγο πολυ ολοι εχουμε φανταστει και ισως γνωριζουμε καλα πως ειναι τα πραγματα τις πρωτες ημερες μετα απο μια απωλεια.οταν η πληγη ειναι ακομη ανοιχτη.τι γινεται ομως μετα? Οταν ανακαλυπτεις οτι οσο περνα ο καιρος τελικα τα πραγματα ειναι πιο δυσκολα να τα διαχειριστεις?αυτο το βιβλιο δινει την οπτικη της Didion.χωρις σωστα και λαθη.χωρις υπερβολικες ατακες , χωρις γλυκανατα quotes για το ποσο ομορφη ειναι η ζωη και ποσο πρεπει να προχωραμε μπροστα παρ'ολες τις δυσκολιες.μονο μια ευαλωτη γυναικα που "ξεγυμνωνεται" κυριως μπροστα στον εαυτο της αρχικα και επειτα σε εμας.το βρηκα εξαιρετικα αληθινο και γενναιο σαν βιβλιο και χαρηκα που εστω αυτη τη φορα αποφασισα να το διαβασω εως το τελος. ...more

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Apr 11, 2009 Dorothea rated it did not like it · review of another edition

This is my first attempt to read anything written by Joan Didion. I picked up The Year of Magical thinking at a used book sale, after hearing her name thrown around in literary circles and not knowing anything about her. At this moment I'm only on page 76 and I don't know if I'll bother trying to make it to page 77 as the pretension is becoming unbearable.

The book is a series of essays she wrote after the death of her husband to whom she was married for 40 years. Little nuggets of Didion's poeti ...more

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Jun 24, 2007 Audrey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: People who have their shit together

I don't think it's Joan Didion's fault that my reaction to this book was to question and/or deride several facets of my life: should I be closer to my husband, like the author? Was I wasting time? Why didn't I keep a real journal? Why were the sporadic sentences in my sad attempt a journal so poorly written? Why don't I have a kitchen notebook to write down my meals like Joan Didion? Why did I just switch tense? Shouldn't I be keeping better notes on the goings-on of my life? In any event, this ...more

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About Joan Didion

Joan Didion

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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.