The Year of Magical Thinking: National Book Award Winner (Vintage International)

I stayed up almost all might just to finish reading it, unable to put this down, although I confess I had to keep a box of tissues nearby. I've lost 5 people in the last few years and, just recently, another friend and so I related very strongly to this book. Didion's unflinching account of the sudden loss of her husband (which occurred while their only child was in a coma in a hospital (!)) deserves to be a classic in the genre of books written by and for those who are grieving. It is hard to find books like this, which are both honest but not overly sentimental, not resorting to the tropes which seem to surround death. She doesn't offer vague platitudes or advice. She simply relates her very personal experience, including the inevitable vulnerability, unexpected moments of being blindsided by memories and sudden tears, etc. She covers all the bases, including the kind of insanity that can seize one in the throes of grief, those moments when you forget the person is actually dead, when you turn to speak to him or her as you normally would at a certain part of the day or reach for the phone to share the latest news. The book is raw. If you're looking for religous or spiritual guidance and inspiration, this is not the book for you. As Didion herself noted, writing about the book recently, it was intentionally written "raw". I assume she didn't want to wait, to distance herself from the intensity of the experience as she wrote it down, quite unlike many other books she has written. Raw or not, it wasn't sloppy, overly sentimental or complete despairing. It was simply honest, heartwrenchingly so, and Didion doesn't deviate from communicating, in absolute striking detail, the sense of alienation and disorientation that separates mourners from those who seem to be living "normal" lives. Grief is its own territory, separate from so-called normalcy. In so many ways, it is an illness, an affliction of the spirit and not one that can be cured in any one way. An aside- the photo of Didion inside the dustjacket is haunting. No question that those are the eyes of someone who has been scraped to the core, wounded and, presumably, still recovering. There is something beautiful in that portrait and, oddly, comforting. It is the face of a survivor, however hard it might be to live as one. This book will remain on my bookshelf and I expect I'll be thumbing through it for solace time and again. Reading it was both painful and cathartic and strangely comforting, with an intensity that left me awestruck. I am still amazed that she was able to produce such a beautifully written book in the throes of so much pain.

This is an amazing read of an author's first year, following the very sudden death of her husband, complicated by their adopted daughter in Intensive care with an unclear prognosis. She relives very detailed memories, trying to bring him back. Sometimes she revisits past events losing cognitive awareness. There is no one to report things to, share lunch with, critique her work, ask help from - they each had their own offices in their home. If one needed to travel for work, they often travelled together and the 'extra' would work in their hotel room. So although their writings and roles were different, there was a lot of collaborative work, along with sharing of ideas, quotes, incidents etc. So they were a couple who didn't spend much time apart, often working long days and then going out for late dinners. So, the loss was magnified. How can the world not stop? John has gone! A very worthwhile read!

Going through grief. My mom died about 4 months ago and I needed the perspective of someone that went through similar pain. Going through desperation of wanting to feel alive again for myself and my mom led me look for something that could somehow validate what I am feeling. Didion does mention her lavish lifestyle frequently, but what stood out was the connection that most of us going through grief feel; Such as, wanting to maintain the connection with our lost person, retracing our steps of maybe what we could have done different to change the outcome, rewriting stories of how they miraculously might come back. This book, just let me feel that I am not alone having this experience. We need to talk more about grief. God bless us all that are going through this.

A Masterpiece on Grief and Memory Joan Didion’s *The Year of Magical Thinking* is one of those rare books that lingers in your head long after you’ve closed it. She writes with unflinching clarity about the sudden loss of her husband while caring for their gravely ill daughter, capturing the strange rhythm of grief—the disbelief, the looping thoughts, the need to control what can’t be controlled. What I admire most is how unsentimental the book is. Didion’s prose is stripped down, almost clinical at times, yet that restraint makes the emotions hit harder. She describes the irrational “magical thinking” that keeps her from giving away her husband’s shoes because, on some level, she can’t accept he won’t return. That vulnerability is universally relatable for anyone who has endured sudden loss. This isn’t just a memoir of mourning; it’s also a meditation on memory, marriage, and how fragile the structures of daily life really are. Didion weaves in medical details, literature, and reflections on the mind’s coping mechanisms, which gave me not only a window into her personal grief but also a deeper understanding of my own. It’s not a light read, but it’s immensely rewarding. The honesty, the craftsmanship, and the sheer courage it took to put these experiences into words are remarkable. Bottom line: A powerful, beautifully written meditation on love, loss, and the ways we try to make sense of the unthinkable—an essential read for anyone interested in the human experience of grief.

Joan begins this memoir of the year after the death of her husband with the following; 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. She then grapples with the "how" and "why" of these statements and recreates the year after her husband's sudden death at their dining room table, immediately after they had returned from visiting their daughter, Quintana, who lay in a coma in ICU. I think Didion did a wonderful job of this telling - leading us through her journey of questions - reflecting back on seemingly random conversations - and exploring her emotions and psychological struggles as she was going through them. Joan explores her grief through reading and finding out everything she can about what went wrong with her husband and by recreating and reliving that night minute by minute and the weeks and days leading up to his sudden death by heart attack. Many times she reflects the moment with a minus countdown to the date (e.g. twenty three days before life changes, etc). There were moments of raw emotion, but in some ways the memoir seemed constrained and guarded to me. I think one of the things that made it feel conflicting in this manner was the recency factor - she is writing these thoughts within the year of his passing and not reflecting back years later...but writing in the moment. She ends the memoir only a year and week after his passing. This recency factor probably kept some of the grief from entering the book, while at other times allowing it to come out in ways that would have been lost over time. I think she did an authentic job of opening up the curtains and allowing us to peer into their relationship and life. While her life is very different than mine, she was very human and the window into her life was appreciated and something I embraced. I would not have wanted her to recreate her life for the "common reader". I appreciate that she was genuine in giving us a window into her life and in doing so, we were also able to catch glimpses into her soul and who she is as a person. I especially appreciated the window into the forty year marriage she shared with John and their partnership - their always working together and the true friendship the seemed to have. From editing each other's articles and books to their travel together. Joan writes that, "marriage is memory, marriage is time." I found myself reflecting on my own marriage and how we truly have time and memory together that no one else has. We have history and this is something that can never be replaced. I've known my wife like no one else since she was eighteen and she has known me as well over the past two decades. I see her both as she was at twenty and as she is at almost forty. It's a wonderful perspective that can only truly be had through the partnership and friendship of marriage or long-term partnership. Where will we be after forty years together and will we be able to look back at a partnership and friendship such as Joan and John shared? I hope so and having shared a glimpse into their relationship I will work harder at ensuring mine lasts. In glancing at a few of the other reviews I see some are irritated by what they perceive as pretentiousness and name dropping. I disagree. Authenticity is something that I appreciate in memoirs and Joan shared from her experiences and her life. Each of us is on a different path and journey and the wonderful about memoirs is getting a glimpse into someone else's story. I think she opened up and shared her story and while it is different than yours or mine, cutting out the fact that they jetted off to Hawaii or Paris to "escape" stress or that they ate out regularly or had wonderful dinner parties with celebrities and other authors would have been attempting to censor her life and would have not been authentic to who she is as a person. Overall, the book was very well written and tightly crafted. I didn't particularly care for all of the details around her medical research, but it was her way of dealing with the grief and finding answers and I think it gave the book it's structure and context. I would have appreciated more flashbacks to their forty years together, but this wasn't a memoir of their marriage, but a memoir of the year of grief following his passing, so I think what she wrote worked well in that context. I'm looking forward to discussing this in our memoir book club next week.

I had this book years ago but never started it. After losing my 39 year old son recently the book found its way to me again. It was a great comfort, just knowing my path of grief has been shared by others who have lost loved ones. Didion is an excellent writer and this read like a novel…I couldn’t put it down.

This book is a difficult one to get into if you're not in the right frame of mind. Having had two false starts with it, I decided to give it one last go before I gave it away. This was the attempt that stuck. A memoir, this book examines grief and love in the face of death. Published two years after the death of Joan Didion's husband, Didion describes her life in the immediate aftermath. With her daughter in the hospital, Didion didn't neither another tragedy. However, as she repeats often, “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” Her daughter is between life and death, but when death comes it takes her husband instead. Although about grief, this book isn't maudlin. Didion writes with an almost cool distance that allows the reader to see how disconnected she felt from her life. Everything is the facts as she remembers them, seen through her attempts to understand the change that life has thrust at her. She researches death and presents us her findings. She wracks her memories of the event and presents us only with her subjective point of view. Everywhere the memory of John and of their life together haunts her, and so haunts us. Simple, honest, and brave are the words I would use to describe this book. Didion bares herself to us in one of the hardest times of her life and I don't think many would have the guts to do that. The writing isn't showy, but boiled down to the bare necessities and strung together in a way that echoes the honesty of the events being told. I haven't lived through enough grief to truly understand what Didion feels, but this book allows me to sympathize. And I hope that it also gives me tools that will allow me to approach grief with dignity when the time comes. Didion says that she never wrote John letters because they were always together. This book is a love letter that could only be written now that they are apart.

Enjoyed this book so much! Didn't know much about her but watched a documentary and had to buy. Recommend.