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Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking Paperback – 4 September 2006

by Joan Didion (Author)

2,489 ratings

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Paperback, 4 September 2006

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From one of America's iconic writers, 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. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete sceptic 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 suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of 40 years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LA airport, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Centre 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’. The result is an exploration of an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad.

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Fourth Estate
Publication date

4 September 2006
Dimensions

12.9 x 1.5 x 19.8 cm
ISBN-10

0007216858
ISBN-13

978-0007216857
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Product description

Review

‘It is the most awesome performance of both participating in, and watching, an event. Even though Didion does not allow herself to break down, only a terribly controlled reader will resist doing the same.’ John Freeman, Independent

‘Ultimately, and unexpectedly for a book about illness and death, this is a wonderfully life affirming book.’ Lisa O’Kelly, Observer

‘Searing, informative and affecting. Don’t leave life without it.’ Financial Times

‘This is a beautiful and devastating book by one of the finest writers we have. Didion has always been a precise, humane and meticulously truthful writer, but on the subject of death she becomes essential.’ Zadie Smith

‘Taking the reader to places where they would not otherwise go is one of the things a really good book can do. “The Year of Magical Thinking” does just that, and brilliantly. Powerful, moving and true.’ Cressida Connolly, Spectator

‘A great book, a great work. Angular, exact, pressured and tough, precise as a diamond drill bit.’ Nick Laird

About the Author

Joan Didion is one of America’s most respected writers, her work constituting some of the greatest portraits of modern-day American culture. Over the four decades of her career, she has produced widely-acclaimed journalistic essays, personal essays, novels, non-fiction, memoir and screenplays. Her memoir The Year of Magical Thinkingwon the National Book Award in 2005.

Product details

Publisher : Fourth Estate (4 September 2006)
Language : English
Paperback : 240 pages
ISBN-10 : 0007216858
ISBN-13 : 978-0007216857
Item Weight : 170 g
Dimensions : 12.9 x 1.5 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #186,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,990 in Family & Relationships
- #10,862 in Biographies & Autobiographies (Books)
- #18,769 in Personal Transformation

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2,489 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		69%
4 star		17%
3 star		8%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

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jjscenario

Beautiful Didion

Reviewed in India on 13 January 2018

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Very moving first hand account of grief and coming to terms with loss. Didion's signature style makes for easy and seductive reading.

2 people found this helpful

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birjais

A remedial segment of pain

Reviewed in India on 16 March 2018

I read this book when i was in the agony of my own selective mind. I read this book when my fears were counting the blessings i had, i read this book in black and blue and in every moment of unending pain and nerve wrecking short lived happiness. I am glad to have finally endorsed the idea of loss and the true meaning of what losing and living after means. I am glad that i found this book once, in a small bookshop that day, i am glad that i felt that this book could give some closure to the loss that crept banging my head for so long. I am glad that i found the lost comfort in u.

4 people found this helpful

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Rob Slaven

Almost Magical

Reviewed in India on 21 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.

10 people found this helpful

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Chithra Menon

Not so much recommended

Reviewed in India on 9 October 2015

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The book was not worth the price. Kept reading the book hoping that it would get interesting or evoke some emotion as pages go by, but ended up sleeping on the couch instead.

2 people found this helpful

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Avee

Poignant and beautiful

Reviewed in India on 2 October 2013

If you haven't read Didion, I'm sorry I refuse to believe that you are a real book-lover. She is a truly gifted writer and I felt privileged to be able to catch a glimpse of how the mind of this stupendous writer worked. She writes both fiction as well as non-fiction, but it is her non-fiction (such as this one) that strikes a chord with me. This book is about how she comes to terms with the sudden demise of her husband of forty years. As you read you realize that she isn't just writing things down to make a book out of it, she is actually being a passive observer of her own reactions, examining and trying to make sense of it all, not an ebullition of melancholia as one would expect from someone under the circumstances. This is a truly well-written book, it draws you in and makes you want to stay. I loved it.

5 people found this helpful

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ruchi

One Star

Reviewed in India on 25 September 2015

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Depressive account of her life. Why should anyone read it!

3 people found this helpful

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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

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

aarnald amundssen

SELF-CENTRED NARCISSISM ASIDE ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 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

Erasmus

I don't know what to make of this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 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 17 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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