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Joan Didion

Year of Magical Thinking Paperback – 11 July 2007

by Joan Didion (Author)

2,517 ratings

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National Bestseller

From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that 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 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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Product details

Publisher : Vintage; Reprint edition (11 July 2007)
Language : English
Paperback : 227 pages
ISBN-10 : 1400078431
ISBN-13 : 978-1400078431
Dimensions : 13.21 x 1.57 x 20.35 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 152,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 584 in Love & Loss
- 1,524 in Biographies of Authors (Books)
- 3,757 in Biographies of Women (Books)

Customer Reviews:
2,517 ratings

Product description

Review

"Thrilling . . . a living, sharp, and memorable book. . . . An exact, candid, and penetrating account of personal terror and bereavement . . . sometimes quite funny because it dares to tell the truth."
--Robert Pinsky, The New York Times Book Review

"Stunning candor and piercing details. . . . An indelible portrait of loss and grief."
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"I can't think of a book we need more than hers. . . . I can't imagine dying without this book."
--John Leonard, New York Review of Books

"Achingly beautiful. . . . We have come to admire and love Didion for her preternatural poise, unrivaled eye for absurdity, and Orwellian distaste for cant. It is thus a difficult, moving, and extraordinarily poignant experience to watch her direct such scrutiny inward."
--Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Los Angeles Times

"An act of consummate literary bravery, a writer known for her clarity allowing us to watch her mind as it becomes clouded with grief. . . . It also skips backward in time [to] call up a shimmering portrait of her unique marriage. . . . To make her grief real, Didion shows us what she has lost."
--Lev Grossman, Time

About the Author

Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York City. She is the author of five novels and seven previous books of nonfiction.

Joan Didion's Where I Was From, Political Fictions, The Last Thing He Wanted, After Henry, Miami, Democracy, Salvador, A Book of Common Prayer, and Run River are available in Vintage paperback.

Customer reviews

5 star		68%
4 star		17%
3 star		8%
2 star		4%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from Australia

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L.P.

Magnificent

Reviewed in Australia on 30 September 2020

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A really wonderfully written piece. Spoke a lot to me particularly when she spoke of different types of relationships and how that can affect the grieving process.

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Jenny Seymour

True Expression

Reviewed in Australia on 13 November 2019

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Brilliantly crafted , powerful and incisive expression of grief and its impact. Unforgettable and a must read for us all.

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jenny Garrett

Four Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 18 April 2016

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a hard year for a very intelligent woman written about with extraordinary honesty

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Hermione

Five Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 9 June 2018

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Raw and touching

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annii

magical joan

Reviewed in Australia on 23 February 2015

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this woman is magical she puts my thoughts on paper

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mrs caron j horton

One Star

Reviewed in Australia on 17 November 2016

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Didn't enjoy this book at all

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Rob Slaven

Almost Magical

Reviewed in Australia on 23 December 2013

In an attempt to bring the greatest possible diversity to my feedback, I present you with two reviews in one. My fiancee and I often read and critique the same books so I give you a review in matching His and Hers format below:

Laura's Review (Hers):

I enjoyed this book, as much as a book about grief can be enjoyed. Ms. Didion skillfully articulated her feelings and thoughts after the sudden death of her husband and during her daughter's illness. Having recently lost a brother I was able to connect deeply with many of her thoughts, particularly the magical thinking she describes. It's not often that I read a book and think "oh my gosh, that's EXACTLY how I've felt" but this book did that for me. Ms. Didion helped me be able to articulate my own thoughts at times when I couldn't begin to articulate them myself.

I applaud Ms. Didion's willingness and ability to put herself out in public view in such a raw, vulnerable way. Death of a loved one is, I believe, a deeply personal experience and I can't imagine sharing my innermost vulnerabilities and thought processes with the public. Perhaps doing so was cathartic for Ms. Didion; I don't know. I do know, however, that it takes a great deal of courage to do so.

Some reviewers have criticized the book for its representation of the privileged life Ms. Didion lives. While I agree that there are numerous references to events and experiences that many people will never have, I don't fault her for that. She wrote this book from her own perspective, from her own viewpoint, and as such she presented her life honestly. I respect a person who is not apologetic for having had such opportunities.

I recommend this book. While it is not a happy read, it is evocative and beautifully written.

Rob's Review (His):

Seldom is a topic of such keen and personal import brought to the page with this much skill and candor. Didion lays bare her soul as she deals with the sudden death of her husband in a year that finds her experiencing all the phases of grief in textbook fashion. The Year should be required reading for anyone dealing with loss if for no other reason than to allow the reader the knowledge that grieving is a universal, expected and normal reaction to loss.

The only factor which leaves it dangling at less than a five-star rating for me is that it's not all that personally relatable. I appreciate endlessly her skill and honesty in this work but never having had the experience she describes it fails to resonate with me. I empathize greatly and appreciate her retelling of this period in her life but there are no points at which I can pin my story to her own. As such, it is an interesting museum piece, a fragment of someone else's life, but not something I can currently internalize.

6 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

wombat

Didion is a self-centered narcissist

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 September 2018

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The Year of Magical Thinking documents the process of grieving that Didion went through in the year after her husband's death, and has been widely acclaimed for its detached, stylised writing. A case of the emperor's new clothes? To my mind her voice is cold, dishonest and vague: there is no heart to this book. Given the subject matter, I find this particularly chilling. She intellectualises her grief for her husband to the extent of removing all emotion. There is no sense of who her husband was – just an awful lot about Didion herself, a clinical recitation of all the literature on grief she’s read, and endless throwaway remarks about her privileged status in Malibu and New York. Then there's the subplot of The Year of Magical Thinking, which is a devastating one: her daughter, Quintana, is gravely ill in hospital while Didion herself is trying to come to terms with her husband's death (Quintana will in fact die the following summer, after Didion had drafted her manuscript but before the book was published). But not once does Didion express any love or warmth for her sickening daughter. Maybe this is why I struggled with this book and am judging her so harshly. In a recent documentary on Netflix (The Centre Will Not Hold), the closest Didion can come to saying something even remotely affectionate about her daughter is "her humour worked for me". Other than that, it's all about Didion. One review of Blue Nights, the book she wrote after The Year of Magical Thinking, about her daughter's death, puts it this way: "What is perhaps most odd about this work is how little we ultimately learn about Quintana, who remains in the background and sometimes fades entirely from view." It’s hard to feel any empathy for someone so resolutely focused on herself amid such sadness and tragedy.

53 people found this helpful

aarnald amundssen

SELF-CENTRED NARCISSISM ASIDE ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 February 2019

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I couldn't get into this until, one day, i had nothing else to read and so,carried on reading. It took time but I started to come alongside her detachment and obsession. Towards the end I found myself in tears and tried to read something out to my wife but stopped, blubbing. My own heart attack experience was explained beautifully. A small quote - along the lines of - "the clear blue sky from which the plane fell", was so perfectly descriptive of how arbitrary life can seem. What do you recommend I read next?

14 people found this helpful

Rose Lois Presley

it’s not your conventional love story, ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ is the ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 August 2016

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Granted, it’s not your conventional love story, ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ is the story of a marriage that ends abruptly, suddenly. Didion writes from the realist perspective, practical, abstract, cold almost. Her husband of 40 years, mid-scotch, dies at the dinner table in their apartment of a heart attack. “She’s a pretty cool customer” notes a hospital observer. Loss is a fearful subject, it’s a frontier nobody ever expects to cross and it’s a subject that nobody ever really talks about. People change the subject, if you lose your partner nobody asks how you cope with the empty side of the bed and what happens at the end of the day when all you want to do is curl up in the conversation of your partner, your best friend. Didion explores the magical thinking that takes over- signs, meanings, messages, whether her husband knew intuitively what would happen as she traces and traverses backwards and forwards across the landscape of their relationship and marriage, his death.

25 people found this helpful

Erasmus

I don't know what to make of this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 December 2018

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I haven't read much Joan Didion so have no markers to steer by, but this book was rubbish and fabulous, repetitive and singular, funny and heartbreaking in equal measure, all the way through. The single word I think I'd use to describe it is 'Lonesome'. Because it is. I admired her fortitude as well as weakness, her grief as well as her (few) joys, and I can only think it was written as both a cathartic and a learning experience.

Despite these weasel words, read it anyway.

10 people found this helpful

Janie U

I didn't feel involved with the narrative but could be good for some people.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 January 2019

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I bought this book some time ago on a recommendation and hadn't been aware of the topic. Having started it however, I was curious why this book seems to review highly.
We are immediately told about the death of the author's husband - a description which could give the comfort of a shared experience to some people and a rehearsal of the future for others.
The author writes well and is very natural. There is no doubting that the topic is very worthy but I felt that she was writing for herself rather than the reader which is always a difficult balance to negotiate. I didn't feel involved with the book although acknowledge that, had I experienced anything like this, others may feel very differently.

6 people found this helpful

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Year of Magical Thinking Paperback – 11 July 2007

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