The Year of Magical Thinking

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......more

Nobody needs to be told, but it's true what everyone says about this book. It's stunningly beautiful and real. It's the best rendition of what it is to grieve I've ever read. And nobody needs to be told, either, what a loss it is to not have Joan and her writing and her voice with us anymore. But we a......more

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started reading this, I had just known it was Didion's most well known work, but I was kind of caught off guard to find out it was about her husband's death and the simultaneous acute illness of her daughter. I'm not completely sure I know how I felt about th......more

The Year of Magical Thinking is a transparent, heartrending memoir on grief. This book first came on my radar in James Mustich’s 1,000 Books to Read, but it caught my eye again when I watched the Netflix documentary: Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. In the documentary, Didion was so articulate t......more

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......more