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 I was not meant to read this September 30, 2008
This whole book describes events and stories throughout the lives of Joan Didion and her family, and it serves as a way for her to express her grief and try to come to terms with the death of her husband of 40 years, all during a year of what she calls "magical thinking."
It's not an entertaining read. It offers some insight on marriage and family, but overall I felt like I was reading something far too personal, a diary of sorts, something that anyone else might write but never publish. Obviously, since it is Joan Didion, the language, the prose, the style, everything about it flows and stops, flies by and slows down in a pleasing rhythm of words, but nothing about the topic is easy to read.
She studies her grief like a med student studies biology, analyzing the various processes that are happening in her mind, causing the sometimes strange and often random thoughts and ideas with which she is constantly struck.
The immediate comparison that comes to mind is with C.S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed," a comparison that Didion points out herself. The difference, though, is that with Lewis' work, I felt like I suffered through much of the grief with him and finished the book feeling a sense of catharsis and ability to move on. Didion's I felt neither of those things; it simply felt like reading her diary. And perhaps that was the point, but in the end I felt that I should not have read the book, and that's never something I like to feel after finishing a book.
 Intellectual treatise on dealing with death August 31, 2008
This memoir chronicles the year after the death of Didion's husband. It is an interesting treatise on grief and mourning, if a bit too cerebral at times.
Didion's husband, John, dies from a cardiac event right before Christmas. Shortly before his death, the couple's daughter, Quintana, suffered an embolism which led to her hospitalization. So basically, Didion has to deal with the death of her husband of 40 years while caring for her hospitalized daughter, who is still clinging to life.
Didion had, I thought, many interesting things to say about the death of a loved one - how we never expect life to change so drastically, so quickly. How we can never really know what to expect, how we will feel, until it happens to us. How most of us may think of our reactions to death in immediate terms - the funeral, etc. - but we never adequately consider the long years of absence thereafter, and how we will deal with those. How, despite what our rational mind knows (this person is gone forever, etc.), part of us still hopes/thinks they will return to us, miraculously.
My criticism of the book is Didion's tendency to over-intellectualize everything. By turns this habit was both interesting and tiresome. Having read the book, though, my guess is that this is the kind of person she is. I would bet that, were I to read one of her novels, I would find the same penchant for the slightly pretentious.
At any rate, I enjoyed the book. Not a must-read, but worth picking up if you have some time.
Repetitive and Pedantic August 20, 2008
Didion repeats unnecessary details. That might be fine when reading the book, but I listened to it on CD, so it was maddening.
I thought the book was overrated and the insights were minimal.
 "Let it go." August 9, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
In "The Year of Magical Thinking," Joan Didion chronicles the death of her husband, author and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne. One evening, Dunne died of a severe heart attack while the couple ate dinner. The day had seemed like any other, aside from the fact that they had just returned from a hospital visit with their grown daughter, Quintana, who was in a coma from an unidentified illness. Didion found herself lost, coping with the trauma of her husband's death at the same time that she faced the uncertainty of her daughter's recovery. This stress manifested itself in numerous ways, including the "magical thinking" from the title. Specifically, Didion talks about wanting her husband back so badly that she tries to trick herself into thinking it possible, such as convincing herself that if she kept his clothes, then he would come back for them. Or vice versa - if she gave away his clothes, this meant that he couldn't come back in the future.
Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one will likely find something in this superb book that hits them - something that describes their grief perfectly. As is typical, Didion goes through various stages of grief and finds herself wanting answers. She wants to know how her husband died, and she goes about it like an author would - researching the topic. Didion also recounts bits and pieces of their life together as she attempts to piece together a new life. At times, she is a bit of a name-dropper, chronicling her fabulous Hollywood life and her friendships with famous authors. However, in the end, she was a widow grieving a loss, just the same as anyone else; death affects us all, is universal. Didion's beautiful writing and the way she discusses her grief is universal as well.
Overall, "The Year of Magical Thinking" is a sublime work of non-fiction that deservedly won the National Book Award. However, I was slightly annoyed by one aspect of the book - the lack of details about Dunne's age. At the beginning of the book, I assumed, based on how Didion writes about her husband, that Dunne was in his 50s. I haven't read anything else by Didion, so I didn't know much about her life. In actuality, Dunne was 70 years old when he died. Gradually, Didion acknowledges that his death was somewhat expected - Dunne had had heart problems for years. Perhaps her neglecting to tell us that earlier about his heart problems and his advanced age is part of her "magical thinking." If one doesn't acknowledge the heart problem, even when writing about it after his death, then said heart problem does not exist. Of course, the age of a loved one is fairly irrelevant to the person left behind; one is still alone. It's a minor point, perhaps, but one that affected my reaction to this otherwise amazing book.
This review is of the audiobook version, which consists of 4 CDs. The reader is Barbara Caruso, who does an amazing job of embodying the "voice" of Didion. The reading is simple and straight-forward, with very little accompanying music, which really suits the tone of the book.
 I can relate... August 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am not of Ms. Didion's generation. I am not a member of her moneyed "jet set." I have never written a book. However, I have to say that her "Year of Magical Thinking" resonates with the way I reacted to the sudden death of my daughter. I recognize the tricks that the mind plays to protect you from the pain. I probably would not call these mental processes "magical." I see them as protective and necessary.
As a result of my appreciation for Ms. Didion's memoir, I would like to address a couple points that stand out among the other reviews here. First, denial does not happen because you will it or because you are too weak to face reality. Despite emotional strength and intelligence, you cannot process all aspects of a significant loss at one time. This causes unusual thoughts at unusual times that do not always jive with everyone else's reality.
Additionally, many dissatisfied reviewers, point to the way Ms. Didion did or did not experience, express, write about her emotions as a result of her grief. I have to admit that I also reacted very intellectually to my loss. My mind was continually trying to process the situation, to go down every path to help myself come to grips. While most people believed that my emotions were in check, I was in shock and drowning in "what-ifs." I can relate to Ms. Didion's racing mind and flat countenance.
Finally, several reviewers claim that people in the Western Hemisphere(and pointedly Ms. Didion) do not handle loss well because our culture has taught us to dread, not embrace, death. This probably has validity. However, I cannot believe that anyone in any culture can unexpectedly lose a beloved spouse or child without pronounced shock, grief, and mourning.
Because of my own life experience and personality, I found this book to be very comforting. It validates many of the thoughts and feelings that I have faced.
I thoroughly appreciate the way she ends the book, by pointing out that no one "has an eye on the sparrow." My daughter's death reinforced my belief that random, horrible things happen with no reason, purpose, or plan. We each must face these things in our own way and time.
My one criticism of this book centers around something that Ms. Didion admits within the text. She says that she does not want to stop writing the book because it will mean that she is letting go of one more attachment to her husband. As a result, this book has about 4 or 5 chapters too many.
I highly recommend this book for readers who have experienced loss or are interested in how other people experience loss. I found it to be a very realistic, intimate portrayal of one person's experience.
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