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!

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.

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.

Livro tocante e muito bem escrito.

Great book to read. Enjoyed reading it

Didion gives us the privilege of spending a year with her. A year in which her husband dies of a massive heart attack at the table as they sit down for dinner, and a year in which her only child hangs onto life by a thread in intensive care suffering from one potentially fatal illness after another. Didion's prose is always lucid, but here the crisp journalistic approach to her subject is muted by her personal odyssey, her frantic need to try to understand and get to grips with events and feelings that are not as easily pinned down or understood as the hard facts and figures she reads and writes about, trying to give herself something to use as an anchor point in her rapidly disintegrating life. Other reviewers have commented on her lack of warmth, her obsessive compulsion to log the minutiae of the days that follow her husband's death and suggested that this means that she is cold. Far from it in my opinion. At the beginning of the book she talks about the strange split in one's psyche when someone close to you dies, the feeling that the world has shattered apart and will never be the same again. Yet at the same time one is obliged to continue living life as if unaffected because our modern sensibilities do not allow for outpourings of raw grief. Then there is the fact that even if we grieve more ostentatiously, the world with all its drab little facts continues turning whether we like it or not. Didion walks the tightrope between a grief so profound that she dare not throw away her husband's shoes in case he comes back and needs them, and the fact that she has to be present in the world for her daughter. She clings to the pragmatic, to the facts, like a drowning woman grabbing a life raft. Her prose is exquisite, much like her pain. An astonishing book.

Un libro muy interesante y una historia preciosa, aunque muy trágica

Great memoir from a exceptional writer.