The Year of Magical Thinking is a transparent, heartrending memoir on grief.

This book first came on my radar in James Mustich’s 1,000 Books to Read, but it caught my eye again when I watched the Netflix documentary: Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold.

In the documentary, Didion was so articulate that I wanted to hear more. She spent her youth typing out Hemingway’s works to learn more about how to compose great writing. This is someone that I had to know more about.

Joan Didion won the same contest as Sylvia Plath, winning a free trip to New York and a spot as a guest editor for Mademoiselle. Oh how this reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken.”

In 1964, Joan marries fellow author, John Gregory Dunne. Two years later, the couple adopt a baby girl named Quintana, bringing her home from the hospital when she was three days old.

Joan and John spend 40 years in marital bliss, finishing each other’s sentences, traveling the world together, supporting each other personally and professionally. Their now adult daughter Quintana is recently married but has fallen ill, fighting for her life in the ICU.

After spending the day visiting their daughter in the hospital, Joan and John return home for a peaceful, quiet night. Joan starts a fire, fixes John a drink, and prepares dinner. As she sits down to the table, John stops speaking, slumps over, and dies.

The Year of Magical Thinking is about Joan’s grief, her loss of her partner and love. She is fixated on that last day. How did he die? When did he die? Could she have done something differently to change the outcome?

She talks about mourning and how the United States doesn’t embrace public grief. In this regard, I wholeheartedly agree. People at my company receive three days of bereavement leave. Three days.

There are a handful of people that I trust in my life. These are the people that I can call at any time day or night. They are the people that if I fall, they are going to be there, right beside me cheering me on and lifting me up, carrying me if I can’t walk. These are people that can’t be replaced or “gotten over” in three days.

Didion mentions how she doesn’t want time to go by. She wants to remember John exactly as he was. This I understand. You don’t want the memories to fade. You don’t want anything to slip. You have to be hypervigilant because that person won’t be there to remind you of the time that you shared together. Someone has to keep the memories alive.

The Year of Magical Thinking felt real, not watered down. If you like feeling things deeply, this is your book.

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I also thought this book was tremendously overrated. In the past, I loved Didion because she was a great stylist and a brilliant structuralist. The title essay of The White Album is probably the best-written essay of all time in my book, followed by F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Crack-up" and Charles Bowden's "Torch Song." She has the ability to analyze the personal politics of narrative, and to disclose just how weird and singular her brain is without even a trace of pity or sentimentality. The White Album and Slouching toward Bethlehem are stunning collections.

However, as much as it pains me to say it, her powers are not evident in this book. I admire her ferocious impulse to bare her grief and all its fractal iterations, but, like Donald Hall's Without, her sentences aren't up to the task. The Didion of the 60's would have cringed to hear a line like "In an instant, your life can change" come out of her mouth. The strength of her earlier works rests on wry and ironic asides, radical withholding of psychic materials paired with a dazzling ability to move through a scene, and metaphors and sensations that are as finely tuned as any you would find in a novel. But above all, her strange sensibility: becoming obsessed with urban planning, noting the anthropology of poolside drinks in Honolulu, analyzing forensically how Jim Morrison played with matches. Her concerns and how they conditioned her view of the world and her self didn't remotely resemble anyone else's, I loved her darling, odd self.

Most of these assets are sadly absent in this memoir. Bald statement, lazy metaphor, and sequence instead of artful arrangement are the rule here, and I hope it is merely due to her grief, and not due to the fall one of the great prose stylists of the past 40 years.

Μιλωντας για αυτο το βιβλιο αρχικα θα ελεγα οτι για μενα ειναι σαν εκεινο το επεισοδιο στα φιλαρακια που ο Τζοι ελεγε οτι οταν εφτανε σε ενα τρομακτικο σημειο ενος βιβλιου,το εβαζε στην καταψυξη για να μην αντιμετωπισει τη συνεχεια.καπως ετσι ειναι η δικη μου σχεση με αυτο το βιβλιο.πρεπει να το εχω στη βιβλιοθηκη μου γυρω στα 10 χρονια και να το εχω ξεκινησει 3-4 φορες και καθε φορα να το βαζω στην ακρη.ο λογος δεν ειναι οτι δεν μου αρεσε.καθε αλλο. Η γραφη της Didion με συνεπηρε απο τις πρωτες σελιδες.ειναι το θεμα του που με εκανε ολες τις φορες που το ξεκινουσα να μην το αντεχω και να λεω "ας το αφησω για μια αλλη φαση της ζωης μου"."οταν θα ειμαι πιο δυνατη, πιο χαρουμενη, πιο ευαλωτη , πιο λυπημενη, πιο...".επισης κανω παρενθεση εδω και σημειωνω οτι το βιβλιο αυτο το ανακαλυψα απο την ηθοποιο Michelle Williams που οταν ειχε ερωτηθει σε καποια συνεντευξη αν υπηρξε καποιο βιβλιο που την βοηθησε να αντιμετωπισει το θανατο του Heath Ledger ειχε πει αυτο.φυσικα μου δημιουργησε κατευθειαν την περιεργεια να το διαβασω.το βιβλιο αυτο λοιπον μιλα για το πως μια γυναικα κυριολεκτικα μεσα σε μια στιγμη χανει τα παντα.ειναι μια απο αυτες τις περιπτωσεις που δεν ξερεις αν πρεπει να γελάσεις ή να κλαψεις ή απλα να μην πιστεψεις πως ενας ανθρωπος μπορει να ειναι τοσο ατυχος.η Didion λοιπον χανει τον επι 40 χρονια αντρα της σε μια στιγμη και ενω η κορη τους βρισκεται στην εντατικη υστερα απο ενα απλο κρυωμα που εξελιχθηκε πολυ πολυ ασχημα..πώς λοιπον ενας ανθρωπος αντιμετωπιζει κατι τετοιο? Πώς μαθαινει να ζει ξανα με εναν τελειως διαφορετικο τροπο υστερα απο 40 χρονια? Πώς μαθαινει να αφηνει το πιο σημαντικο προσωπο στη ζωη του πισω και να προχωρα μπροστα? Το βιβλιο αυτο λοιπον με συνεπηρε καθως ειναι μια ωμη καταγραφη -εως και κυνικη - των οσων ακολουθουν την απωλεια.γιατι λιγο πολυ ολοι εχουμε φανταστει και ισως γνωριζουμε καλα πως ειναι τα πραγματα τις πρωτες ημερες μετα απο μια απωλεια.οταν η πληγη ειναι ακομη ανοιχτη.τι γινεται ομως μετα? Οταν ανακαλυπτεις οτι οσο περνα ο καιρος τελικα τα πραγματα ειναι πιο δυσκολα να τα διαχειριστεις?αυτο το βιβλιο δινει την οπτικη της Didion.χωρις σωστα και λαθη.χωρις υπερβολικες ατακες , χωρις γλυκανατα quotes για το ποσο ομορφη ειναι η ζωη και ποσο πρεπει να προχωραμε μπροστα παρ'ολες τις δυσκολιες.μονο μια ευαλωτη γυναικα που "ξεγυμνωνεται" κυριως μπροστα στον εαυτο της αρχικα και επειτα σε εμας.το βρηκα εξαιρετικα αληθινο και γενναιο σαν βιβλιο και χαρηκα που εστω αυτη τη φορα αποφασισα να το διαβασω εως το τελος.

"I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.
I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.
Let them become the photograph on the table.
Let them become the name on the trust accounts.
Let go of them in the water."

Joan Didion, in this memoir following her year after the death of her husband, John, and hospitalization of her only daughter, deals with grief. She talks about grief vs. mourning. She recounts memories of her life with John in New York and Los Angeles. She processes these emotions she is dealing with as a widow right on the page.

At times it's slow. She gets into a bit too much medical information for my liking, and it does seem odd when it's such a personal story, but maybe that is her way of coping with her husband dying. But the moments in which she talks about how seeing things, or visiting old places, triggers memories of her early married life with John are beautiful. She writes openly and honestly and with a poignancy that is unmatched in a lot of memoirs.

It's quite a short book, brief, covering one year but really many years--the 40 that they are married--and her journey to finding closure. But there isn't always closure, as Didion says: "I look for resolution and find none." Because life happens and death happens, and we just keep on living.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started reading this, I had just known it was Didion's most well known work, but I was kind of caught off guard to find out it was about her husband's death and the simultaneous acute illness of her daughter. I'm not completely sure I know how I felt about this. Parts of it I really liked and found moving. I really like the stream of consciousness way it was written and the repetition through out. It really felt like it captured the certain monotonous and obsessive way grief feels. The last line of it confused me and I had to look it up and see what it meant, and I think there's probably no way I would've known what it meant because I don't know much about Christian theology. It felt sort of unsatisfactory the way it ended up and how it plays out but I also think that's very in line with the way the loss of someone essential feels, there isn't clear resolution, just a slow moving forward, of things fading away. I think mostly I liked this one, not sure though if it's enjoyable reading per se and if I would recommend it to people unless they were dealing with grief.

I read this first years ago, and today I listened to the audible reading of this, which kept my interest. A hard true story to share, I imagine, and a hard one to listen to, as well, overall, but at the same time inspiring.

When I read this the first time, I rated it 3 stars, but I enjoyed the audible reading more. It felt more personal to me.

An audible short - less than an hour and a half.

I am not the type of person that cries at funerals. I find crying at a funeral as constructive as trying to stop a raging river with a few paper towels and a bag of sand, nothing is achieved. Find me not callous, for I am sensitive to the recently departed and their family. It's just that...I don't know...I know there is nothing that can be done to bring back that person. Rereading the above really makes me sound like an ass so let me try it another way: death is something we all have to accept; my acceptance of death comes more easily than it does for others.

Take Didion for example. Here we have a very educated woman who foggily ambles through the year following her husband's (John Gregory Dunne) death. John died of a severe infarction. He had a long history of heart issues. He knew this was the way he was going to die. But even with all this evidence, his personal testimony, Didion finds the death of her husband shocking, as if she were blindsided. (I’ll grant that no one wants to be in mid-conversation with someone when they die.) Now stop cursing me, let me continue. John’s death in-and-of-itself does not make this story compelling. Quintana, John and Didion’s daughter, and her sickness is what makes this story compelling. You see, we are all going to die. Husbands will have to bury wives, and wives will have to bury husbands. That’s life. But none of us ever want to experience having to bury a child. And the way that Didion structures her story allows her to think she is grieving for her husband, when, in reality, she is telling their story to mask the fact that she is scared shitless about losing her daughter.

You see, Didion does a great job of recounting the great love her and John shared for almost forty years. But some of the details that she gives the reader really only show that we (the readers) will never know what it was like to live a life with John. We’ll never know what it feels like to get a free ticket on the Concorde; we’ll never know what it’s like to get free tickets from the NBA commissioner; basically, we’ll never know what it was like to live a life of affluence and prestige. But, even without ever knowing this aspect of her life, we will all more than likely at some point fear for our child, which is the bridge that connects us to Didion. During the chaotic (brilliant narration, stylistic technique) timelines and temporal displacements via vortexes, Didion is unable to mask the fear she has of losing her only child. Unfortunately, Didion also realizes that this year of magical thinking is less about her husband and more about her daughter and closes the door for us readers over and over again just as we are about to get a real true glimpse into Didion’s grief. You see, Didion was able to deal with her husband’s death; what she was unable to deal with was the possibility of losing her child.

But even with the absence of these concrete feelings, and the insertion of insights from countless psychiatrists and research papers about grief, the story works. Didion understands that she might be able to hide from the reader, allow for what information is passed-along to us, as long as she is able to stay one step in front of her feelings. Fortunately for us, grief and confusion and frustration and anger and misery know no boundaries. What is never said on the written page is said with infinite detail in the between spaces of events and conversations within the story. The year of which Didion chronicles is truly heart-wrenching; I’m pretty sure I would not be able to cope as well as she did. But it is also full of promise, redemptions, and hope.

This is a beautiful and tragic story, one that is sure to become a classic concerning death and the grieving process.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Disclaimer: Being fresh into the grieving process myself, you may want to skip this review and head onto others. Undoubtedly I'll purge my grief in a review about a book on grief. You've been warned.

Right off the top I will say this for the book: raw, powerful, honest, amazing.
If you have any interest in the grief process, READ THIS BOOK.

The only criticism that I might have is that there's a lot of name dropping. Insert famous names and some fancy locations (Beverly Hills, Malibu), talk about using fine china, fancy bathrobes from some store I'll never set foot in... Normally, that would drive me mad. (rich or poor, like that one book says, everybody poops!) However, I never felt with her that the name dropping was pretentious, or snobbish. The people and places she named were simply a part of her life, so who am I to hold that against her?

Wealth, while it may provide many a luxury, cannot insulate you from death, from grief. Who said death was the great equalizer? It is, truly.

Didion's husband died very suddenly of a heart attack. My mother died (weeks ago) slowly of cancer. Very different circumstances. The link is the loss. Didion writes this about death after a long illness (experienced with others in her life): In each of those cases the phrase, "after a long illness" would have seemed to apply, trailing its misleading suggestion of release, relief, resolution. Yet having seen the picture (impending death) in no way deflected, when it came, the swift empty loss of the actual event.

I mostly agree with her. But in full disclosure, there was relief for me. I would not have to watch my mom waste away for weeks (MONTHS!) in a nursing home. Release? Yes and no. Resolution? No way.

After my mom died, I heard multiple times how very strong I was. What I was supposed to be doing, what should I be saying? Did they think I was callous for not weeping at the funeral? Did they think I was putting on a front? Truth be told, my grieving began 18 months prior, the minute the surgeon came out and told me she had small cell lung cancer. I knew what that meant for her - death. My grief began then, at that moment. It continued each time we'd go to chemo or when she needed a blood transfusion. It continued when she lost her hair. It continued when tumors spread onto the nerves of her arm and she could no longer use it; not to put on earrings, not to hold a cup, not to pick up her grandson. One night, after having dinner at her house, I wept the entire way home, realizing that the number of meals she'd make for me were limited. I knew what was coming. When she died, even though I saw it coming, it was there, just as Didion says, the swift empty loss.

She writes about her own personal grieving process, her struggles to resolve his death in her mind. She writes of how very unique it is to each situation, loss of a parent versus the loss of a spouse. These sentences ring very true:
Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be.
Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.


Didion writes about the concept of grief crashing or rolling in like waves. Lots of psychologists speak of it. The coping information Hospice sent me also mentioned "waves" of grief. For me, waves isn't quite right. I'll call them grief grenades. Waves you can see, you can hear, you feel them building and you can tell when they'll break. My grief grenades have hit at moments when I least expect it. Examples: walking in the store and seeing my mom's favorite brand of cookies prominently displayed on the endcap. Hearing on the news that 58 year old so and so died after a battle with cancer. Deciding to purge out e-mail contacts, I see her name. Hospice calling on my birthday to see how I am holding up, instead of a call from her, singing "Happy Birthday" off key.

Swift empty loss.

In one part of the book Didion writes of getting rid of clothing that belonged to her husband. She cannot bring herself to part with his shoes, in case he needs them when he comes back. (magical thinking, indeed!)

There were things of my mom's I could not part with. Silly things. For instance, I kept a pair of her earrings that I had longed to throw away for the last few years. They were cheap, old clip-ons, so worn that the color had been rubbed off half the surface. I'd get so pissed when she wore them! Did she not see that they were worn out and looked tacky as hell? However, those earrings I have saved in a small box of other things that will remind me of her. Mind you, I'm certain she's not coming back. I saw her die. I dressed her body. Her cremated remains sit 3 feet away from me on a shelf until we have a beautiful summer day and I can place her ashes into the water at the lake. But I cannot bring myself to get rid of these things: those damn earrings. her favorite coffee cup (bright yellow sunshine cup purchased on a trip she took to Florida.), a potato masher from 1972, the nightgown she wore often in the weeks before she died. a pair of her jeans, ironed, of course, with the crease down the front.

Unlike Didion, who could live among the things that belonged to her husband, I had to empty my mom's apartment. After her death, I immersed myself in this task. Some of it was easy. Trash out. Food that I won't use to food bank. I set up boxes for her brothers, sisters and mom, things she wanted them to have, things I thought they'd like to have as mementos. Then it gets tricky. All the furniture, boxes of clothes, the toaster... I did not want to end up on an episode of Hoarders. I tried to be practical and donate what I could, but there is still a corner in my basement full of her things. (A friend of mine said her garage is still full of her mother's things 5 years later!)

When the last item of her furniture was lugged out of the apartment, I watched them load it into a truck and I sat in her empty apartment and wept.
I wept as I shut the door for the last time.

Didion on the other hand, comes home, sleeps in the same bed, sees his chair, his stuff, always there. A year after she dies, she goes to the chair where he took his last breath, and looks at the pile of books and magazines he'd been thumbing through prior to his death.

How does that mess with your grief process? Does it make it easier? Worse? In my mind as I moved things out I could say I was simply moving her into a new apartment. Magical thinking.

Didion kept her husband's shoes. Magical thinking.

For us, and for those we love who are grieving, it is so very important to recognize and appreciate the fact that we all grieve in a unique fashion. Didion points to literature on proper grieving etiquette, how our culture expects us to behave, even giving us time lines for the process. (be stoic! take a year and then get on with it, already!) Many "great" minds have discussed the process of grief leading to resolution, healing.

It's not that simple.

If I may quote another author, Anne Lamott: "You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp."

A year after she loses her husband, Didion has not found resolution. She worries about his memory fading in her mind, of not keeping him "alive". She writes: I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead., let them go, keep them dead. Let them become the photograph on the table. Let go of them in the water.

In other words, resolution may never come, but we must learn to dance with the limp.

I don't think it's Joan Didion's fault that my reaction to this book was to question and/or deride several facets of my life: should I be closer to my husband, like the author? Was I wasting time? Why didn't I keep a real journal? Why were the sporadic sentences in my sad attempt a journal so poorly written? Why don't I have a kitchen notebook to write down my meals like Joan Didion? Why did I just switch tense? Shouldn't I be keeping better notes on the goings-on of my life? In any event, this self absorbed reaction kept me from going all the way to a 5. I suppose even though it's not Joan Didion's fault I still blame her a little bit.

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.”

I read this in one day, something I almost never do. I’ve had the book for years-- a tragedy about how Joan Didion dealt with the death of her husband, the writer John Dunne. I’ve been a little afraid of reading it, but today I was drawn to it, and during these strange times, I’m learning to follow my instincts.

This isn’t a book of conclusions. Those are left to the reader. It’s largely a review of facts: experiences, timelines, and medical realities, like the meaning of “lividity,” when the blood pools in the body after death. This sounds morbid, but there is something very comforting about facts. I’m noticing that now during this pandemic, but I’ve found it true during most times of personal crisis. When the theoretical world I normally prefer is too dangerous, there is that other, concrete world--a world I can safely fall back on.

Didion’s writing is very concrete. The one fiction of hers I’ve read (Play It As It Lays) brought a particular time and place and personality into very sharp focus. I didn’t relate to that character at all, nor do I relate to Didion’s lifestyle described in this memoir (she is a wealthy and successful writer who moves in circles with other wealthy and successful people in New York and Los Angeles). But what I like about her writing is the specificity. It’s like that specificity, that concreteness, whether I related to it or not, was a conduit (or Didion might say vortex) to my own very different specific world.

That’s how this book worked for me anyway.

I did relate, from my own bouts with grief, to the obsession with death when it happens--the absolute need to look it in the face. That’s what Didion seems to be doing with this book: looking her experience with death in the face. I found it mesmerizing, unique, and insightful.

“If the dead were truly to come back, what would they come back knowing? Could we face them? We who allowed them to die? The clear light of day tells me that I did not allow John to die, that I did not have that power, but do I believe that? Does he?”

This wasn't what I expected.

I thought it would be a heartbreaking account of grief, dealing with raw emotions and sorrow. I wasn't sure that I wanted to read something so harrowing and bleak. That's not what I found.

Yes this was about grief, but written in such a detached way, that it felt emotionless. I sympathised with Didion and enjoyed reading about the medical side of her husband and daughter's illnesses, as well as hearing about how she slightly lost her grip on reality. Still it felt like a writer doing a piece about somebody else. Perhaps that's just an effect of Didion being a journalistic writer for so many years.

Where this let me down, is that I really couldn't care less about her privileged lifestyle, who they knew, where they flew and the antics they lived through during the 60s and 70s. I didn't need these snippets of their lives.

I felt a little sad at the end, thinking of what was to come next with her daughter, still unknown to Didion at the time of writing this book. But I didn't really care about her loss and that's not something I should feel in a book about grief.

Joan Didion analyzes the importance he gave to each moment that folowed the disappearance of his loved ones from his life : husband and daughter.
There are fragments that recompose a puzzle, a reintegration of a life, so that it can go on. There is, though, no clear ending, because the novel is just a fragment of life, with consequences in present, with thoughts and conclusions that go beyond the pages of the book.
" Was is possible to feel angry, and at the same time - feel responsible ?
The answer would be simple :
anger creates guilt, and vice versa.

" Magical thinking" - the notion introduced by Didion in the title, refers to a term in psychology, according to which people erroneously associate facts and events.
For Didion, the magical thinking happened when, for ex., - she could not donate all her husband's shoes, out of the conviction that he would need them again....
I think if some people start running, to give a new breath of their life - Didion writes..
It's her weapon, which she uses for to try to face the future.