From one of America’s 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.Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall … Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year’s Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.
This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”
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I felt that the author was whining about what we all go through.
A poignant tale of loss and dealing with death of a spouse.
Joan Dideon’s writing is poetic and her way of capturing that first year of walking between two worlds is powerful. I felt like she had crawled inside my head and told the story of my own experience.
An interesting read for anyone going through the grieving process.
The author describes the terrible loss that she sustained over the course of a year, and the course of action that she took to overcome the tragedy.
Tedious and incredibly self-indulgent, even if well-written.
Wonderful writing as usual.
Ouch, This book hit home one so many levels that I had to stop and simply savor it. What a treat!
This the book I recommend for those dealing with grief. She writes so openly and honestly, she shares it all. It helps you accept the loss with reality.
Reading Didion’s book The Year of Magical Thinking helped me to grieve the loss of loved ones and to understand that what I was going through was quite normal. Grieving is personal and we all do it in the only way we know how. I loved this book. She’s very open and honest.
A must read book. Incredibly well written and moving account of grief.
I really liked this book a lot. I’ve had many deaths in my family and there is a year or more of magical thinking. The thinking I believe helps you cope.
We all dread becoming a widow.
Written after the death of her husband and then daughter, Didion explores how she coped with these deaths through her own lens of grief.
The author was very honest about her life and feelings she had during a most difficult time
I loved this book. The author tells of her, sometimes bizarre ways, she deals with her grief after the death of her much loved husband in the year after his death.
The story of the author’s real life experiences when she loses her husband and her daughter to early death. Very touching and well written.
Staggering. Brutal. Brutally real.
This account of the loss of Didion’s husband made a large impression on me. The notion of “magical thinking” provided convincing insight into just how the mind and emotions try to cope with an enormous and shocking loss. It rang true and was touching without being sentimental, something Didion seems incapable of. She is not a favorite author of …
It was sort of hard to read, wish she would of wrote more about Quitana, so the reader could get to know her better.