The Year of Magical Thinking (original 2005; udgave 2007)

This was just the right book for me now and just the right thing to crash through my months-long reading slump, the first I can remember in my adult life.

Joan Didion's searching chronicle of her first year following the sudden death of her husband in 2004 helped steer me toward an essential realism in my own similar crisis. She sheds light on such ordinarily inexpressible traumas as the shattering of all our connections and the collapsing of the everyday routines that anchor our lives. She distinguishes valuably between mourning and grief. She exposes her own toxic denial and turns it to recognition.

I'd never read any of Didion's work before, but I'll be back for more. The pairing of her prose, clear as lead crystal, with the plumbing of emotions and perceptions too deep for most people's words, worked a kind of catharsis for me. Like her, I'm struggling to grasp that no response is coming and that the absence is permanent.

And that in the end you have to go with the change.

"There was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible. That was why I needed to be alone." (page 32) ( )

Attratta dai premi vinti e dal titolo accattivante, mi annotai di leggere questo libro qualche tempo fa, dimenticandomi sia la trama sia l'appunto.

Trovato quindi su una bancarella dell'usato l'ho comprato. E ho fatto un errore.
Un saggio sulla vedovanza scritto in quella forma di "nuovo giornalismo" nato negli anni '60 e che comunica i fatti sotto forma di narrazione.
Quindi una cronaca in forma di narrazione che parte dalla sera in cui il marito viene colpito da infarto e prosegue con l'elaborazione del lutto.

Insomma, è un esempio di forma letteraria particolare più che un libro interessante. ( )

Didion does a deep dive into the process of grief and mourning after the sudden death of her husband at home and near-loss of their only daughter in the same year. Powerful in the raw pain it conveys, but beautifully written. ( )

Joan Didion tells of the death of her husband John. They had a unique marriage it seemed because other than the first 5 months of the marriage, they both worked from home and spent nearly 24 hours a day together for 40 years. Nevertheless, I think her reflections and her processing of grief were helpful.

For me the book was good. She retells memories of her life with John, his death, everything leading up to his death, the surprising foreshadowing moments and conversations before his death only knowable afterward, her difficulty moving forward, the process, etc. with insight, wit and candor. As as she processes her struggle, the reader does as well. Her reflections sparked a desire, perhaps a need in me, in working a bit more intentionally on my own process of healing, not from a death, but divorce.

Three things I didn't like: 1) Their lifestyle felt unrelatable at times (because of fame and wealth). 2) Sometimes she was overly detailed. 3) There didn't seem to be much "magical thinking." I happen work with people who have serious mental illness and I was hoping for a bit more psychosis / delusions. There were some, but not enough (in my opinion) to merit the phrase in her title.

Neverthless, a good book - recommended for those going through grief. ( )

This is a gutting account of death and loss in the span of a year. Joan Didion is a novelist whose daughter suddenly ends up in the hospital with a mysterious unexplained illness, and in the middle of her ICU tenure, Didion's husband suddenly dies. In the middle of this grief, her daughter recovers and collapses again, and Didion reviews her life, questioning everything that could be a sign. This is a raw memoir and goes back and forth in time, as Didion processes her grief and her life moving forward. ( )