De verdad quería enamorarme de este libro y de esta escritora, pero supongo que, por mucho que nos esforcemos, todos tenemos prejuicios y mochilas cargadas a la espalda. La mía está llena de una conciencia de clase que a veces me impide aceptar determinados discursos. Discursos como este de Didion.

Y eso que el tema del duelo me parecía un temazo.

Por desgracia, lo que he aprendido de este libro es que los pobres y los ricos, por mucho que nos empeñemos, no nos morimos igual.

Dice Jorge Manrique que nuestras vidas son los ríos que dan al mar, pero lo cierto es que unos ríos transcurren plácidos, limpios y sonoros hasta su desembocadura, mientras que otros riachuelos van a trompicones por el fango, cargados de basura y sedimentos hasta su final.

Tiene razón la frase de la contracubierta del libro: la honestidad de Joan Didion es brutal. Y es que no hace nada por esconder una vida llena de privilegios y derroches, casas de ensueño, viajes a Honolulu y París, y amigos y contactos “importantes” a los que pedir favores.

Joan Didion pertenece a esa clase de gente que parece tener todos los recursos a su disposición. No me extraña que le haya costado tanto entender que toda su fama, su riqueza, sus contactos, no eran suficientes para evitar la tragedia de su vida. Una vida fabulosa, privilegiada, truncada por una bofetada de realidad.

Lo siento de verdad, Joan, pero me ha sido muy difícil empatizar contigo en esta narración, porque mi realidad y la tuya son muy diferentes.

Y es que, en mi realidad, la gente se muere aguardando una llamada del médico que nunca llega. Se muere esperando su turno en la lista de espera de una radiografía. Se muere en la calle, o sola, o rodeada de desconocidos. Se muere de frío y de hambre o se marchita de desesperación.

La gente que no es como Joan Didion no tiene esquelas escritas por grandes nombres ni pomposos funerales en Beverly Hills. Ni tampoco criados (llamados “José”, por cierto, que son “casi como de la familia”) que acudan a primera hora de la mañana a limpiar la sangre que ha quedado en el suelo tras la tragedia.

La gente que no es como Joan Didion no puede permitirse coger cualquier avión para reunirse con sus seres queridos en cualquier hospital del mundo, ni pueden exigir que sean atendidos por las mejores (y bien pagadas) manos profesionales.

Sí: todos morimos y todos sufrimos (teóricamente) igual ante una pérdida, pero la realidad es que algunos tenemos que limpiar con nuestras propias manos los restos de sangre de la moqueta.

3 Stars. I heard a lot of hype about this book prior to reading it and by the reviews I see that People either really liked it or disliked. I think I am in the middle. I find it very hard to rate someone's grief and story of their year since the loss of a loved one (her husband). Joan Didion's memoir opens with her daughter being ill with pneumonia and being in the hospital. After deciding to eat at home, she begins to make dinner and realizes that her husband is not longer talking to her. After calling an ambulance her husband is declared dead at the hospital. Didon goes into detail about her year following her husband's death. Her daughter continues to have health issues and several serious hospitalizations, brain surgery, etc. Didion goes back and forth telling us about her marriage, the ceremony, their vacations, events with friends, etc. I noticed that several reviews mention her wealth and social status. How much or how little money we have does not determine how deeply we feel or how much we grieve. Some also describe her as being cold in her descriptions. Perhaps if she went into detail about crying jags, screaming fits, etc. the book would be more dramatic...but perhaps that is too personal for Didion and everyone grieves in his/her own way. I am sure writing this book helped her grieving process. Did I feel connected with her? No, but I appreciate her telling her story. She is a gifted writer.

I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to write about this book. This is, without a doubt, the perfect book about having your husband die suddenly of a massive heart attack while your daughter is in the hospital in a coma, about to begin her own death-defying medical struggle (one she eventually loses, although that’s outside the scope of this particular book). I thought this memoir was so perfect that it’s hard for me to understand any of the criticisms of it. Are the critics saying there’s only one way to grieve, and Joan Didion is doing it wrong? Or that there’s only one way to write about grieving, and Joan Didion is doing that wrong?

If you’ve ever grieved the loss of anyone, I don’t see how you can hold either of these opinions. Grief does not follow some straight line, where you’re devastated and then day by day you’re less devastated, until one day you’re fine. As this book makes clear, grief is sporadic and unpredictable. It ebbs and flows. There’s nothing logical about it, and trying to impose logic isn't going to help you at all. And so, Joan Didion takes a cab home from the hospital after the death of her husband John, and her first thought is that she really needs to discuss the situation with John. She initially doesn’t want people to know about his death, because it might ruin his chances of coming back. With both her daughter and her husband, she goes over situations again and again, as if by doing so she could somehow change what has already happened. She moves back to Los Angeles to be with her daughter during her latest hospital stay, but finds the streets so full of memories that she must devise careful routes that don’t lead her past any troubling locations that might leave her useless for the rest of the day. She cries to her doctor that she “just can’t see the upside” to the situation. If all of this sounds grim, it is. Of course it is. But perfect.

There seem to be two main criticisms of this book. One is that Joan Didion is ice-cold, standoffish, and unfeeling. She certainly seems this way sometimes: At the time of her husband’s death, the social worker assigned to her calls her “a pretty cool customer.” Significantly, though, Joan wonders what an “uncool customer” would be allowed to do: “Break down? Require sedation? Scream?” Joan wonders this not with judgment, but clearly with a kind of envy: Just because she doesn’t do these things doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to.

Fittingly, then, the other criticism I’ve seen is that Joan is too self-pitying. Joan addresses this in the book as well. We abhor self-pity in our culture, but, as she points out, if you’ve been through a traumatic experience over which you have no control, self-pity is a perfectly normal response. And it is! So I guess the truth is, in this book, Joan Didion is both self-pitying and a “cool customer.” In this book you see quite clearly the struggle of someone who’s kept things under control for years and now finds, late in life, that nothing at all is under her control. How it could be written any other way is beyond me.

This book of nonfiction .. a sort of widow grief memoir.. written by a living legend who is a master narrative teller.

The losing of her husband the writer John Gregory Dunne over dinner, a heart attack.. one moment you are here and the next you are gone. The haze and confusion.. the ambulance and the paramedics... the hospital and morgue.

Then to make things worse.. her only daughter Quintana slipped into a septic shock.. after a bout of flu that turned into a double pneumonia. In this book Joan focuses more on John and his passing and concept of grief

How grief is fluid
Waves
Eb and flow

The loss of a husband ... yet Joan wants to be professional and distance .. some would say she is cold hearted and not crying buckets

If you are looking for a pure tearjerker this book is not for you .. it’s like grief this book fluid ... ebbs and flow.. just like life

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), by Joan Didion (b. 1934), is an account of the year following the death of the author's husband John Gregory Dunne (1932–2003).

The Year of Magical Thinking was immediately acclaimed as a classic book about mourning. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: 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.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «سال اندیشه جادویی»؛ «سال تفکر جادویی»؛ نویسنده: جون دیدیون؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هفتم ماه ژانویه سال2019میلادی

عنوان: سال اندیشه جادویی؛ نویسنده: جون دیدیون؛ مترجم: نیلوفر داد؛ ویراستار مهدی افشار؛ تهران نشر قاصدک صبا، سال‏‫1397؛ در215ص؛ شابک9786005675351؛‬ چاپ دوم سال1397؛ موضوع سرگذشتنامه نویسندگان ایالا متحده آمریکا - سده21م

عنوان: سال تفکر جادویی؛ نویسنده: جوآن دیدیون؛ مترجم: نیوشا افخمی‌عقدا؛ تهران، نشر کتاب کوله‌ پشتی، سال‏‫1397؛ در240ص؛ شابک9786004611572؛‬

کتاب «سال اندیشه جادویی»، اثری نوشته ی «جون دیدیون» است، که نخستین بار در سال2005میلادی منتشر شد؛ در داستان چند روز پیش از کریسمس سال2003میلادی، «جان گرگوری دون» و «جون دیدیون» دریافتند، که تنها دخترشان، «کویینتانا»، دچار بیماری شده است؛ دلیل بیماری نخست آنفولانزا به دیده میرسید، سپس علائم ذات الریه هویدا شدند، و پس از آن، «شوک سپتیک (نوعی بیماری عفونی)» خود را بروز داد؛ «کویینتانا» به کمای مصنوعی برده شد، و زیر مراقبتهای شدید پزشکی قرار گرفت؛ چند روز بعد، «جان گرگوری دون» دچار نوعی حاد و کشنده از بیماری عروق کرونری قلب شد؛ در یک ثانیه، رابطه ی نزدیک، عاشقانه و چهل ساله ی «جون دیدیون» و همسرش به پایان رسید؛ چهار هفته بعد، وضعیت سلامتی «کویینتانا» رو به بهبود گذاشت، اما دو ماه بعد، ناگهان از حال رفت و تحت یک جراحی مغز دشوار و شش ساعته قرار گرفت؛ «دیدیون»» در این شرح حال زیبا، و تأثیرگذار تلاش میکند، چند ماه و هفته ای را توضیح دهد، که تمامی عقایدش نسبت به زندگی، مرگ، بیماری، ازدواج، خانواده و خاطرات را برای همیشه تغییر داد؛ کتاب «سال اندیشه جادویی»، اثری درباره ی خود زندگی است

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 01/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 01/03/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

This book was a struggle. Not because I shy away from the topic of death, but because I could never get over how much of the text read like the navel-gazing of a depressed narcissist, even though just as large a portion of it was a beautifully crafted universal expression of grief – something most people will relate to at some point in their lives.

There was excessive name dropping. Self-satisfied career talk. The decadent life that Joan Didion led for decades. And an almost wilful ignorance of the privilege she experienced, both before and after the tragic death of her husband occurred. Every couple of chapters I was ready to set the book aside and forget I ever picked it up, but then she'd drag me back in for a couple of pages with a genuinely insightful observation on the terrible mental state she was going through.

On a personal level, my feelings for her swung like a pendulum: I don't think I particularly liked the woman, but why should that matter? She's as entitled to sympathy as anybody.

All said, she can definitely write, and the numerous insights on the phenomenon of grief made the book a worthwhile experience.

I read this book in grad school and cried my eyes out. A GR friend is currently reading it, and her brilliant highlights/notes reminded me that I should revisit this text. A few moments that moved me:

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death.”

and

“We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.”

Kind of a Heart of Darkness journey to visit at the end of this year, but it hits.

File Under: “As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day be not at all.”

To call Joan Didion cold or even heartless - true as it may be in the light of The Year of Magical Thinking, this monument to the analytical dissection of grief - is itself a cold and heartless condemnation. We all grieve in our own way. This is hers.

After losing numerous family members suddenly and too soon, Didion then lost her husband and daughter within the span of a year. This book is her cathartic contemplation of that loss.

Heartrending, yes occasionally. Heartwarming, no never. Didion's demeanor is all too cerebral. It is as if she has educated herself above emotion. Certainly it can be said that some educate themselves beyond their own well-being. In this case, we see a mind so removed from the everyday reality of man as to answer "a motherless child" instead of "a nut" when asked to fill in the blank for "Sometimes you feel like ____." The result, when pushed to produce a book about grieving for loved ones, is an academic's deconstruction. No, it is not without feeling, she is still human after all, but stoicism is her strongest suit.

Beyond the almost biting cynicism you get beautiful language, great observations and insights to, let's call it, a different kind of emotion.

I assume, and sincerely hope, she never reads reviews like this. She shouldn't care what snarky assholes think of her work, not this work and not after the experiences she went through that brought it about. One who suffers so many visits from Death should not give two shits or even one single flying fuck what the rest of the world thinks.

So raw and beautiful. Would probably revisit this book later on in my life once I’ve done a little more living and learning ❤️

“the power of grief to derange the mind has in fact been exhaustively noted.”

i will say i found joan didions writing to be very eloquent. this was quite the delve into grief, how time flies, and the volatility and precariousness of life.

“grief is different. grief has no distance. grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

“a single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”

my heart hurts at how true this is. the person missing for me is not my husband nor a significant other but it hurts just the same. every single word written was like a punch to the gut.

grief is hard to navigate. it is hard to encapsulate the overwhelming sadness you feel. the way you do not understand how to navigate the inevitable change in your life - the way you ignore it, pretend it is not happening and that your person will come back to you just as you knew them before they left. not every one person grieves the same, and we certainly did not in every way for a plethora of reasons, but this book helped put words to feelings i did not know i was feeling. helped me realise the importance of memories, even if they are not clear ones, as they will help us move forwards in life. because we live on, even if our missing person or people do not.

pieces of work like this change lives. the brutal honesty and care taken with every word shall stay with me for a long time, even the words i did not relate to. and i hope wherever joan rests now, she is at peace with her beloved husband and daughter.

I expected a lot from this book, but was pretty disappointed. Towards the end I found myself counting pages - how many left to get it over with. The memoir revolves around the loss of her husband a month before their 40th anniversary. Her recollections of a long and happy marriage involved a lot of privilege, a lot of name dropping and exotic destinations. I could feel her grief and much of the writing is clear and beautiful, but not a lot that translates to what others might experience or feel. Some of the best passages were quotes from other writers, such as Auden and Ariés, DH Lawrence, CS Lewis, and even her husband’s “Dutch Shea Jr” novel.

Her idea of a vortex, though, was quite visceral. That there are times in grief and mourning that a thought or a thing triggers a whirl of emotion and pain and reminder of loss that can’t be controlled.

I would suggest looking elsewhere for meditations on grief or how others have dealt with mourning.