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“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 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 have a grubby Post-it note by the side of my bed on which I've written in pencil: loss is not always death.I don't remember anymore if these are my words, a line I wrote down from a book, or something that I took home from therapy, but the wisdom remains: loss is not always death.I have two friends right now who have been nearly decimated by recent divorces, and they will assure you, quickly, that a significant, life-altering loss does not need to involve death. In fact, both women will let yo...
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...
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...
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
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 all keep trying to say it anyway.Bottom line: Pure excellence. ----------------pre-reviewonly joan.review to come / 4.5 stars----------------currently-reading updatesready to self destruct on a weekday...
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan DidionThe Year of Magical Thinking (2005), by Joan Didion (b. 1934), is an account of the year following the death of the author's husband John Gregory Dunne (1932–2003). The Year of Magical Thinking was immediately acclaimed as a classic book about mourning. 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.عنوان...
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...
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...
There was a lot to think about in Didion's memoir, especially about grief and identity. I just felt that the way grief was intellectualized made this grief seem less immediate and less personal. Despite a moving account in The Year of Magical Thinking, Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains Didion's seminal work and the one I'll go back to when I think about how good a writer Joan Didion is.
