Very interesting document which heavily dotes upon pain, grief, death. Basically, megapersonal, deep, sad stuff revealed to us... for what purpose? To observe, I guess. Bear witness. Some grief SHOULD be shared... Because....? In order to...? Diminish it? I guess it must this: to ultimately give it meaning: to cash in, when the light of life has gone out...

Let a prose powerhouse not go gently into the night. Much must be said and articulated masterfully (entwining ever so gracefully the clinical with the poetic), and so this is surely a rotund success. Except for the type of glamorous life shared by the married writers--it is shown off in every single page. I cannot relate, I can relate to the effort, not to the final product. We get such a shattering view of affluence! The green-eyed beast enters the stage... The last time I was affected this much by the mere privilege of another unfortunate soul was in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." Fabulousness gets all spoiled & stuff, gets marred by the whims of fate, etc...

Affluenza truly is killer.

È dal 2019 che leggo qualsiasi libro parli di un lutto e che mi passi sotto mano. A volte mi lasciano indifferente, a volte mi turbano. Mi aveva scosso ad esempio "Diario di un dolore" di Lewis, ma questo lo ha fatto in modo esponenziale. Segno evidente che il "mio" pensiero magico iniziato nel 2019 ancora non è finito.

Joan Didion's daughter Quintana fell gravely ill and was hospitalized with a serious infection. She was placed in a medical coma and put on life support. Only weeks later, Joan's husband, John Dunne, was speaking with her from their living room after visiting their daughter in the hospital, stopped mid-sentence and keeled over dead on the floor of a massive coronary. Four weeks later, Quintana pulled through and revived, but only two months after that, she collapsed from a massive brain hematoma.

Joan Didion documented this year in this book, which I think I heard about on NPR or somewhere, I'm not entirely sure. I know you're all going to hate me for kicking the widow when she's down, but this book was a lot less than I expected. I got through it, but I really thought it would be more about her feelings. Instead, Didion did a lot of research on grief and puts many of her findings in the book. She spends a lot of time analyzing the way things are and trying to figure out if she's behaving in a way that seems "normal" for your "average widow."

I read a review on Amazon.com that calls Joan Didion's writing as "cool" and perhaps lacking emotion, and I felt that way about this book. The most moving passage in the whole book was one in which she states that she realized she was in denial when she cleaned out her husband's closets, but couldn't get rid of his shoes because he would need them when he got back. I thought to myself, "well, now we're getting somewhere", but perhaps she didn't want to share where those painful thoughts led, because there was no indication that she picked the shoes up and flung them at the walls while sobbing in rage. And I wanted her to. I wanted her to be angry at God and everyone for putting her in this terrible situation with her husband's death and her daughter's serious illnesses. But instead, she seemed rather detached. Maybe she didn't want to share those feelings, but if that were so, she shouldn't have written a book purporting to be about that very topic. I found this book to be tremendously disappointing.

El año del pensamiento mágico, de Joan Didion, es definitivamente uno de los libros más desgarradores, duros y sinceros que he leído. Al escribir una novela como esta, Didion muestra una valentía incalificable; desde la pena desoladora de la muerte, nos revela su lado más íntimo y vulnerable. Un fiel retrato sobre el dolor de la pérdida, del luto y de la búsqueda de sentido. No hay mucho más que decir sin caer en repeticiones absurdas. Así que para cerrar digo que lo recomiendo mucho, y aclaro que no se debe esperar una muestra de literatura extraordinaria, puesto que aquí solo nos aguarda una madre y esposa inmersa en tristeza, recuerdos y dudas incontenibles, y eso, en mi opinión, es una de las representaciones más fieles a la verdad que se pueden plasmar en lenguaje.

«Somos imperfectos mortales, conscientes de nuestra mortalidad aun cuando tratemos de eludirla, vencidos ante nuestra propia complejidad, tan acorralados que cuando nos dolemos por lo que hemos perdido, también nos dolemos, para bien o para mal, por nosotros mismos. Por lo que ya no somos. Por la nada absoluta que un día seremos».

Didion's memoir of the year after her husband's death, and the serious illnesses of her daughter Quintanna, is a gripping read. It moves back and forth through her married life with John, recounting moments of possible foreshadowing of future disaster. She mentions and then documents the unwinding of the mind and spirit after losing a loved one, what happens to protect, to shelter, to then move on. I found much to relate to, possibly to return to at a later time.

I've seen negative mention by others of Didion's penchant for name/brand dropping. It really didn't strike me that way while reading. These people and items were facts of her and her husband's lives together and were a part of their identification. Their memories were made at fancier places than I inhabit perhaps, but that does not seem to merit a penalty. In this memoir, individual memories are key, whether they are of a particular perfume or tie, or restaurant or movie director. Each thing or person led to another memory which furthered the journey or explanation of emotion. I don't know if I'm expressing what I mean here, so I think I'll end by saying I found this book very meaningful.

didion’s writing is nothing short of breathtaking and this has absolutely become one of my favorite books. a must read.

I have only experienced the death of a few friends and my grandparents, so I cannot say that the grief that Joan Didion describes has ever been my own. However, her loss of her husband John from a sudden heart attack while simultaneously her daughter Quintana was fighting for her life talked to me very deeply. This is not a feel good, self-help book. It is a heartbreaking and yet cathartic reliving of her first year as a widow. I admit to wetting the pages with a few tears as I read the entire book in one sitting today. The loss of some of my friends hit me hard because I could still remember them when we had spent time together and I regretted that there had been so precisely little of that time. This, in a far more intimate and poignant manner is what Ms Didion describes as she picks up the pieces and moves on. The prose is splendid as many of the themes and images recur again and again as she processes and moves from grief to mourning. I think what moved me the most was the phrase her husband had said to his daughter, "I love you more than even one more say" that Audrey Hepburn says to Sean Connery in Robin and Marian.
For anyone dealing with loss and bereavement, this is a very cleansing read. For anyone coming out of physical or psychological trauma, I also thinking that this book hold valuable insight.

"you sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. the question of self-pity."

i picked up this book and read it knowing nothing more than those two short lines. those two lines which become the refrain of the memoir.

i think i must have been drawn to it intuitively, i needed to read this book when i did. didion's memoir records her thoughts, feelings and actions during the year following her husband's death and her daughter's near-death hospitalizations (i learned later that after the book was published her daughter did die, a fact which is incorporated into the broadway play adaptation).

there is nothing sentimental about this memoir, though it easily could be. instead, the memoir feels like a combination of reading didion's diary and also following her every action. she tells us of every thing she does to try to understand her husband's death and daughter's illness, relying primarily on science for her answers, which she does not find.

this is not a self-help book. it did not teach me how to properly grieve. instead, it showed me how one woman, in her own particular circumstances, handled her grieving, which sometimes included not really handling it at all.

i needed to read this book when i did and i would recommend it to anyone who has ever experienced a profound loss from which you may not have fully healed. this won't teach you how to heal but it may make you feel less alone and less crazy when life as you know it ends and you begin that insane plunge into the question of self-pity.

"الأشخاص الذين فقدوا عزيزًا تميزهم نظرة معينة تُرى على وجوههم خلال الفترة القصيرة التي تعقب الفجيعة، نظرة قد لا يدركها سوى أولئك الذين قد ارتدوا هذه النظرة ورأوها على وجوههم".

في سرد تأملي يشبه التيه في الذكريات القديمة، ومحاولة تجميع وترتيب الأحداث الماضية كقطع الفسيفساء للرؤية النهائية لألم الفقد ومحاولة التعافي من الحزن والألم وتلك الحاجة الملحة للشعور بالأسى على أنفسنا؛ تروي لنا الكاتبة الشهيرة"جون ديديون" عن فقدانها المفاجئ لزوجها الكاتب "جون جريجوري ديون" في نهاية ديسمبر 2003 بعد زواج دام ما يقرب من أربعين سنة، وذلك بالتزامن مع معاناة ابنتها بالتبني "كوينتانا" من مرض نادر وكيف قضت ديديون عام 2004 في التعافي من الحزن وألم الفقد.

"بسرعة تتغير الحياة. في لحظة تتبدّل. تراك جالسًا تتناول العشاء، وإذ بالحياة التي تعرفها تنتهي. أي شفقة على الذات تلك".

قامت بتدوين أفكارها وشعورها خلال ذلك العام العصيب، ورحلة التعافي مع غياب شريك العمر واستحضار كل ما كان بينهما من شجون وشئون، ومشاركة حياتية بين زوجين في رحلة الحياة المكونة من شبكة من الروابط السليمة، روابط قد تكون مؤلمة، لكنها حاضرة تؤنسنا بقسوتها، لأن من يفقد عزيز يبقى وحيدًا بكل معنى الكلمة.

"اتضح أن ألم الفقدان هو مكان لا يمكن لأحد أن يدرك كنهه إلا بعد أن يصل إليه. نتوقع، أو نعلم، أن شخصًا من أعزائنا أو أقاربنا قد يموت، لكننا لا نفكر في الأيام والأسابيع القليلة التي تعقب هذا الموت المتوقع".

ركزت في تلك المذكرات الحزينة على ما كان بينها وزوجها الفقيد من اهتمامات مشتركة وحوارات، وتذكرها لبعض الكلمات والأحداث قبيل وفاته وهل كان يتوقع وفاته حين قال كذا وكذا، أفي مثل هذا اليوم حدث هذا وحدث ذاك، كما افتقدت الكثير ما قد عايشته معه وما كان يمثله من شريك حياة وفي، كما نلاحظ طرحها للكثير من الأسئلة في تلك الفترة من دون أن تتلقى أي جواب عليها، وبعد وفاته كانت تحاول أن تعكس خط سير الزمن وأن تعيده للوراء وظلت تحاول.

"ما كان بإمكاني أن أحصي الأفكار التي تخطر ببالي خلال اليوم والتي كنت أشعر بحاجة دائمة إلى أن أشاركه إياها. هذه الحاجة لم تمت بموته. ما مات بالفعل هو إمكانية سماع رد منه".

كان عالم متفرد من وصف شعور الترمل ومعاناة مرض الابنة، تبدع في تفاصيله "ديديون" وتسليط الضوء على الحزن وتدميره لما حولنا من مسار هادئ نعيشه بدون حساب الفواجع ومباغتتها في لحظة مفاجئة. يعيب السرد التفاصيل الطبية والإحصائيات الأكاديمية، ولكن يشفع لها أنها في حالة تشبه اللوثة العقلية وفقدان الإدراك اللحظي، مع محاولة فهم كل ما حدث لها بعد رحيل الرفيق ومعاناة ابنتها الصحية وتفنيد كل ذلك. وكما ودعها زوجها في ديسمبر 2003 ودعتنا "ديديون" في ديسمبر 2021 ولعلها حصلت أخيرًا على سلامها الأبدي. الكتاب حصل على الجائزة الوطنية للكتاب وتحول لمسرحية عام 2007 ومن أكثر الكتب مبيعًا.

"أعرف لماذا نحاول أن نُبقي أمواتنا أحياءً: نحاول أن نبقيهم على قيد الحياة ليستمر وجودهم في حياتنا، لنبقى نحن أحياء. أعرف أيضًا أننا إذا ما أردنا نحن أنفسنا أن نحيا يأتي وقت يتوجب فيه علينا أن نتخلى عن موتانا، أن نعتقهم من تعلقنا بهم، أن ندعهم وشأنهم، أن نسمح لهم بالموت".

I had the pleasure of (briefly) talking about this book, which has always meant the world to me, on the BBC in commemoration of Didion's passing. It retains its raw power, and the ending is an all-timer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XuaQ...

I have a grubby Post-it note by the side of my bed on which I've written in pencil: loss is not always death.

I don't remember anymore if these are my words, a line I wrote down from a book, or something that I took home from therapy, but the wisdom remains: loss is not always death.

I have two friends right now who have been nearly decimated by recent divorces, and they will assure you, quickly, that a significant, life-altering loss does not need to involve death. In fact, both women will let you know, matter-of-factly, that the deaths of their spouses would have resulted in a financial security that the abandonment by their spouses has obliterated.

Loss is not always death.

But here, in Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, loss is absolutely, irrevocably about death.

More specifically, the death of her husband, John.

This is not, as I once suspected, a self-help book, and there aren't, as I once thought, tips here on how to embrace magical thinking.

There is no magical thinking here. . . just a lot of recalled memories, questions about what she could have done differently to prevent her husband's death (nothing) and grieving, grieving, grieving.

This is my first exposure to Joan Didion's writing and I can tell you with great confidence: she can write. The lady can write, no doubt about it.

I highlighted several passages and was often in awe of the way she views life events, in a highly educated, classical sort of way.

However, I had two main issues with this book. Big issues that were almost deal-breakers for me.

My first complaint: the incessant name-dropping. Boy howdy, do I hate name-dropping, and I'm encountering it more and more in memoirs lately. Ms. Didion, for whatever reason, wants you to know that she hangs out with famous people, stays at fancy hotels, and she didn't drive a car, she drove a Corvette.

She is also extremely out of touch with how other people live, and I couldn't honestly tell if this was just a personal limitation or if she wanted us to know that it was the very nature of how special her particular life was with her husband that made her fall so much harder than the rest of us would, if we lost our spouses.

This paragraph of hers is the perfect example of what I'm trying to convey:

Later, after I married and had a child, I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those soufflés, all that crème caramel, all those daubes and albóndigas and gumbos. . . These fragments I have shored against my ruins. . .

Do you see the problem?

It's partly poetic, and partly revolting.

Ms. Didion never drives back to the hotel, she always drives back to the Beverly Wilshire.

The second complaint: her memoir is so very specific to the loss of John versus the loss of spouse, I honestly found that her story lacked general appeal. I understand it is HER story, but I believe that a reader must find themselves somewhere in the pages, in order to remain engaged.

Occasionally, she dug deep and tapped into some more approachable, generalized suffering and this, to me, is when her writing truly hit its mark: my heart.

I would imagine that the hardest part about being separated, divorced or widowed after so many years with a partner would be the living alone, and she captures this feeling ever so poignantly here:

There came a time in the summer when I began feeling fragile, unstable. A sandal would catch on a sidewalk and I would need to run a few steps to avoid a fall. What if I didn't? What if I fell? What would break, who would see the blood streaming down my leg, who would get the taxi, who would be with me in the emergency room? Who would be with me once I got home?

Now that is a fear that most of us would find relatable.

This memoir was not a slam-dunk for me, but I do have great compassion for Ms. Didion's terrible loss and I have found myself kissing my family members more often on the cheeks this week. Sometimes it's good to be reminded that we could lose our loved ones at any time.

I think Ms. Didion's fiction might be a more appropriate undertaking for me, and I will tackle some of it soon, but I do hope her characters dine on something other than daubes and albóndigas.

Whatever the hell those are.

DNF
Para quem não precisar de sentir empatia por uma mulher que acabou de perder o marido e tem a filha internada com uma doença grave, este é o livro ideal. Talvez como forma de se proteger, Joan Didion racionaliza tanto que tira toda a emoção à leitura.