This is another book I read years ago, and now cannot recall what it was like. ( )

thoughts on state of California in light of author's family history

I was captivated by this total immersion into her state’s history, as well as the place of her youth. She covers so much without making it a dry telling of dates, names, and facts. The drive for fortune and fame covers the motivations for most histories, but it’s certainly even bigger for California. Gold. Gold. Gold. Fame. Celebrity. Even schoolchildren in Vermont knew of 49ers and the lust for gold, knew of the corrupt land and water deals, and knew about Hollywood. I remember the thrill of just seeing a California license plate when I was a young punk watching the tourists drive by in Newport, Vermont. This was a well-written telling of a land that had such promise, but Didion kept it real, she didn’t make it magical or spiritual.

I would have loved to have had Vicky by my side so that I could bounced lines and reflections off her agile and opinionated mind. This is easily one of my favorite books by Didion. “Compelling…. A love song to the place where her family has lived for generations, but a love song full of questions and doubts.” –The New York Times. She kept out of the way of the material, even when that material was as personal as her own family’s history. ( )

There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.

Written in Didion’s wonderful conversational prose and published in 2003, this short book of interconnected essays starts by Didion, born in Sacramento, describing her perception of Californian history as a child. She critically analyses this as an adult, placing emphasis on the disconnect between owners of land and farming, and also on the blaming of this generation’s immigrants by the children or grandchildren of immigrants.
The second section centres on the reasons, including economic reasons, for the national US attention attracted by the Lakewood Spur posse in 1993, coming from a community who considered themselves middle class American. As a British reader, I was unaware of these incidents, but Didion discusses this young criminal gang as a symptom of the failure of the Californian community created after the Second World War to successfully reinvent itself following the contraction of the airforce defence industry.
The third section discusses Didion’s descriptions of California in her first novel, River Run, published in 1963. This seeks to tease out the contradictions between the California Didion wished to portray in her book and her current (2003) perception of what California was then.
The final section touches on her mother and father’s deaths.
Although each section is discrete, together Didion creates a powerful picture of the Californian dream and its more complex reality. ( )

She has such a clear voice, no unnecessary sentences or digressions. She rights from the depth of her very self with no pathos just honesty. ( )