"You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends". Didion uses this statement throughout the book, and this is a statement, or some varied version of it, that has touched or may touch many of us at some point in time. The thought of it; we suppress it, bury it just out of view of our consciousness, but we know it's there, that we may have to face it head on someday.

That's what Joan Didion does in this book when she is faced with her husbands sudden death. This is how she existed, how she went about surviving the first year after his death. It's an analysis, a confession even, of what she experienced, what she thought, and how she eventually was able to accept the reality. Brilliant writing, but one would expect nothing less from this accomplished author.

Winner 2005 National Book Award Non-fiction

On December 30th 2003, Joan Didion‘s life changed forever. She and her husband John had just returned from visiting their daughter at the hospital, when he suddenly broke down at their dinner table and unexpectedly passed away. Didion reflects:

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i don't feel comfortable giving this a rating but the way that grief is described in these pages is so comforting and so gut-wrenching at the same time and, that being said, i think my soul has returned home. i believe there is no other talent that could ever achieve such a feat. thank you for this mrs didion.

This is the second book my wife has recommended to me about people whose spouses die. If I'm found dead please deliver this review to the police.

There's a clinical feel about it. Not accidentally: Didion goes out of her way to cite research on the effects of grief. She analyzes it. You can feel her standing back from it, trying desperately to understand it. It doesn't engage in the despair of About Alice. This is how Didion, not our mushiest writer but one of our best, approaches the world: she tries to dig in and understand. She's "a cool customer," as a hospital worker describes her at the moment of her husband's death. "What," she wonders, "would an uncool customer be allowed to do?"

So people complain that there isn't enough passion here. At times I felt like the tragedy here wasn't the loss of love, but the loss of habit.

But habit is life, and what Didion is trying to describe is the loss of her life as she knew it. My wife said it well: About Alice is about love, she said; Year of Magical Thinking is about loss. Didion refuses to go through the motions; she doesn't engage in the histrionics we expect. This is not the trappings of grief but grief itself: deep and black and quiet. It's personal and without artifice. None of this mass-produced conformist dreck: this is artisanal grief, produced by hand.

I hated this book. It is the reason I instituted my "100 pages" policy (if it's not promising 100 pages in, I will no longer waste my time on it). So within the 100 pages I did read, all I got from Didion was that she and her husband used to live a fabulous life and they know a lot of famous people. She spoke of the '60s as a time when "everyone" was flying from LA to San Francisco for dinner. Um, no, actually, "everyone" wasn't doing that then and they're not doing it now. Instead of saying "our friend so and so gave the eulogy at my husband's funeral," she said, "The great essayist David Halberstam." What does that add to the story? I found only brief spots of actual grief for Didion's husband and daughter, but they weren't enough to overpower my loathing for the author and her self-importance.

To be honest, I found most of this memoir about grief underwhelming. I feel a little bad saying that about a book about something as sad and intimate as your husband dying, but there it is. There were some occasional lovely turns of phrase. I also found reading about this rich white lady's unexamined life of privilege to be tedious and all the stuff about the American health care system fucked up but simultaneously not interesting?

I've seen this book mentioned as something spectacular in more than one place, but I can't really understand why... Parts of the author's thoughts on grief and habit are interesting, but I do agree with some other reviewers regarding the name-dropping. Why does the author have to mention the full names of absolutely everyone, whatever little role they played in the story?

This book would probably have been more interesting if it was written by someone not so extremely privileged. How do people who have to actually deal with things handle grief? Didion has people who do everything for her, she has like a hundred helpers. There's also something in the writing (or possibly the translation) that makes the grief and sadness a bit distant.

Wow. I suppose people grieve in their own way. Joan Didion's way is to write a book more concerned about name dropping every socialite and celebrity she can. I never really got a sense of the kind of people her husband and daughter really were.

"We had gone with David and Jean Halberstam to see the Lakers play the Knicks. David had gotten the seats through the commissioner of the NBA, David Stern". Look, I have nothing against rich and/or famous people. I really don't. But it's details like this that she felt were more important in her little anecdotes than sharing actual parts of her life with her husband or daughter. Given her connections, she probably could have banged on the keyboard with a stick and all her friends at the New York Times and Time magazine would fall over themselves saying "so brave!".

This book is not. I'm sorry these terrible things happened to her. She is a genuinely good writer. But this book is just awful. It's very readable, but pointless.

Fun fact: I started this book to show off my academic pretentiousness to the people at my school and now I’m crying because of it.

This book was beautifully written. Everything was captured in such detail, and she manages to evoke emotion without being melodramatic. The way that she wrote about grief felt so real to me, and even if it doesn’t, it’s not my place to judge because not everyone grieves the same way.

I do feel that the middle dragged a bit, but I can see the reason behind that. But it did redeem itself because the rest was amazing. Honestly, everything that needed to be said about this book has already been said.

Przeczytałem o stracie, o chorobie, o bólu, o cierpieniu, o śmierci, o niemocy przyznania przed sobą, że osoba, którą kochało się czterdzieści lat nie żyje. Nie ma jej. Nie wróci. Obudziło się we mnie współczucie do Didion i jako jednostka, która sama doświadczyła straty i patrzyła na czyjąś smierć byłem w stanie mentalnie objąć ją i powiedzieć, że może płakać, że może przeżywać i nie musi zamykać się w klatce. Wszystko kiedyś minie.

To książka autobiograficzna, dlatego ocenienie jej trochę mija się z celem, aczkolwiek mogę zaznaczyć, że pod względem literackim jest to dzieło nad wyraz dobre. Didion jest ze słowem pisanym za pan brat i nie musi się wysilać (choć sama pisze, że jest inaczej), żeby opowiedzieć o tym co przeżyła w klarowny, przejmujący sposób.

Jednak ja do „Roku…” nie wrócę. Ta książka nie była dla mnie. Może to kwestia tego, że nastawiłem się na dzieło uniwersalne. „Rok magicznego myślenia” nie jest uniwersalny. To książka napisana dla literatów i krytyków, a może dla kogoś, kto już tę autorkę dobrze zna (takie odniosłem wrażenie podczas lektury). Jakiekolwiek utożsamienie się z Didion, poza emocjonalnym elementem samej straty bliskiej osoby, wychodziło poza granicę moich możliwości. Przeczytałem o roku życia uprzywilejowanej pisarki, obracającej się w świecie artystów, dziennikarzy i polityków. Nie uroniłem łzy, nie czułem się poruszony, a czasem nawet byłem mało zainteresowany tym, co ma jeszcze do opowiedzenia. Nie odbiorę Didion kunsztu, wrażliwości i wyczucia słowa, ale jest mi przykro, że jednak do mnie nie trafia.

Nie odbieram autorce prawa do opisywania własnych niewątpliwie trudnych przeżyć w taki sposób, w jaki ma ochotę, jednak jak dla mnie „Rok magicznego myślenia” jest zbyt mocno osadzony w realiach klasowych Didion. Nie przemawia do mnie porównanie czytania dokumentacji medycznej do prób zrozumienia gramatyki języka obcego na zagraniczne wycieczce, nie trafiają opisy przelotów samolotem do San Francisco na kolację, bo „wszyscy tak robili". Takich elementów jest wbrew pozorom bardzo dużo, przez co jeszcze bardziej dystansuję się od treści, a ja gubię się w gąszczu nazw ekskluzywnych restauracji, hoteli i nazwisk „wybitnych eseistów". To nie jest to, czego szukam w literaturze.

While watching (on impulse), Griffin Dunne's terrific doc about his aunt Joan Didion, it dawned on me that I knew little of her work (though I'd known of her for years). Basically I was only familiar with her work as a screenwriter (working with her husband John Gregory Dunne).

So I read this.

I know I've talked with many people who - when the subject comes up - prefer not to talk about death. ~attempt to change the subject. That's always seemed strange to me. Why not talk about it as (an informal) part of preparation for it?

It's something we all have in common.

Didion's 'The Year of Magical Thinking' is an unintentional companion piece to C.S. Lewis' 'A Grief Observed' (which I read many years ago). It is (I suspect) more hard-edged (which only means it is an American, as opposed to British, approach). It is a thorough examination of the process of grief. It would seem that Didion began the work soon after she first began entering the grieving period. The book does, indeed, take us through exactly one year (and a day).

During that time, Didion not only lost her husband but she almost lost her daughter. (Eventually she did lose her daughter as well but that actual loss did not occur within that year.)

Though perhaps (on some level) intended as a sort of self-therapy, the book is for us all. The book is what we all (or will) share and face.

Reading it is sort of an experience of tough love. How do you process? How do you face facts? How do you get yourself through - and allow yourself - the various avenues of grief (which include regret, self-blame, re-living the days for 'info', etc.). How do you let go of someone? When can you?

It's certainly a sad book - but it's also a strong one, as strong as it can be under the circumstances. It's a brave book as well - even if it might doubt that.