The connections between Joan Didion’s fiction and that of Marguerite Duras are hard to ignore: not that one stole from the other, but that they worked on strangely parallel tracks, thematically, formally, even down to their construction of sleepy, damaged, melancholia-ful, not-there feminine protagonists. And yes, surely they would have despised each other’s work.

There is also the strange matter of seeing now that Didion has catalyzed much extraordinary fiction since she took up novels—to be sure her most famous student, Bret Easton Ellis, but also works like Elizabeth Hardwick’s SLEEPLESS NIGHTS and especially Renata Adler’s two remarkable Didion-slim novels, PITCH DARK and SPEEDBOAT.

A BOOK is probably the least of Didion’s mature novels, but it is written with the same magisterial authority that makes all Didion’s prose so electrifying. That it is about a mother’s relationship to a daughter who goes seemingly crazy and escapes her care; and about a drunken, rampaging husband who dies of sudden cardiac arrest will terrify readers of Didion’s later family memoirs when they realize this novel was written in 1977.

Wonderful, as always. 4.5 stars.

I read this book a long time ago. I remember liking it much more then than I did now. I loved The Year of magical thinking, I loved Blue Nights and South and West. But here, in this early fictional work, her voice sounds too contrived, her writing seems forced, too removed. The repetitions. The short sentences. I felt an affectation that irked me. So three stars because i can't deny it, Didion is a masterful writer nevertheless.

A Book of Common Prayer is a book about a lot of things, but at its most basic it's a book about the breakdown of truth, of meaning. Charlotte Douglas, a protagonist of sorts, is repeatedly referred to as "delusional," and Grace Strasser-Mendana, the narrator, is constantly having her reliability called into question:

"All right," I said finally to Marin Bogart. "You tell me. You tell me what you think your mother did in Boca Grande."
"I think she played tennis all day," Marin Bogart said.
"She didn't ever play tennis," I said.
"All day. Every day. I only remember her in a tennis dress."
"I never saw her in a tennis dress."

Didion never resolves this and similar inconsistencies, choosing instead to move on and let them fade into memory.

As Warren—Charlotte's first husband—writes on his deathbed, "you were both wrong but it's all the same in the end." Warren is abusive to the point of absurdity, would probably be the antagonist of any other novel, and would be incredibly fun to hate if there were any shred of humor in Didion's portrayal of him. But there's no humor here, none at all.

In fact, part of the horror of the book is that we end up taking Warren's cynicism seriously. He wastes away ostensibly from cancer, but his words keep echoing. It doesn't matter whether Charlotte Douglass wore a tennis dress or not. It doesn't even matter who directs the uprising in Boca Grande, a mystery that Didion spends surprisingly little time explaining considering its centrality. All that matters, as Didion puts it, is that "Boca Grande is:"

Boca Grande is.
Boca Grande was.
Boca Grande shall be.

On Grace's part, she ends her narration by telling us that she has "not been the witness" she "wanted to be." In a sense, her account is a failure—and yet, it exists. She doesn't even know for certain why she's telling us this story in the first place, or what it's supposed to be:

Call this my own letter from Boca Grande.
No. Call it what I said. Call it my witness to Charlotte Douglas.

A Book of Common Prayer left me feeling a similar way, wondering if there was a point to all the cruelty, all the confusion that Didion portrays so immaculately. I don't think there is one. Like Boca Grande, A Book of Common Prayer simply "is."

"

What an extraordinary writer Joan Didion is. I continue to be amazed at her ability to narrate the complicated internal life of her characters while gently leading the reader through an intricate web like plot. This story is like a crystal caught in the light with illuminated facets shining one after the other, in no apparent order. I finish the tale and feel so deeply moved by the beauty of human life. How does she do this?

This is one of my favorite books I’ve ever read by Joan Didion.

Na samom početku pesme "Makedonija" Dado Topić se onako koncertno rokerski razdere "Jen-dva-tri-jen-dva-jen-dva-jen-dva-tri" i to je odlična najava i signal upozorenja i bendu i slušaocima da se upravo prelazi na taj nepravilni makedonski ritam. Mislim da je Džoun Didion mogla slobodno da uvede neki sličan signal u ovaj roman.

Signal da će svaki paradoksalni iskaz biti propraćen nekom vrstom prekvalifikacije u idućem pasusu od jedne rečenice.

Za kojim će gotovo izvesno uslediti još jedan završni cinični jednorečenični obrt.

I to je u suštini okej, i funkcioniše gotovo uvek, ali u ovom srazmerno kratkom romanu nekako smo svesniji da je u pitanju tehnika nego kad čitamo njene eseje u kojima je zanatska veština bolje primenjena (životnije?) i manje vidljiva. Prosto kao da joj forma ne leži. A to je šteta jer je od početka vidljivo da Džoun Didion tačno zna kako roman treba postaviti i šta sve treba da sadrži, ali onda to ispadne nekako ravno i vidno konstruisano iako lepo i pametno napisano i često duhovito. Na primer, naratorka je sama po sebi super osmišljena kao uspešna antropološkinja koja je studirala kod Krebera i radila s Levi-Strosom i onda se razočarala u svoju nauku i prešaltovala na biohemiju i usput se udala za člana vladajuće porodice u imaginarnoj banana-republici i jelte uključila u strukture moći a sad lagano umire od raka i priča nam životnu priču Amerikanke koju je poznavala. Ali onda autorka uopšte ne iskoristi tako interesantnu premisu i intrigantnu ličnost nego razveze o beskrajno manje zanimljivoj Šarloti (koja deli mnogo više karakternih i fizičkih crta sa samom autorkom) i tome kako se ona, nakon što joj je ćerka odbegla u levičarske teroriste, bacila u spiralu očajanja i autodestrukcije koja se završava (saopšteno nam je na samom početku, nije ovo spojler) predvidljivom i prizvanom nasilnom smrću.
Baš kao i u esejima, Džoun Didion mnogo manje zanimaju šire političke implikacije a mnogo više pojedinci na čije živote te implikacije utiču i na njihove, da tako kažem, beslovesne reakcije. Šarlotin stadijum poricanja situacije u kojoj se našla za vreme romana dostiže epske razmere, ali u jednom trenutku knjiga baš oživi i poleti: kad se pojavi njen bivši muž, otac nestale ćerke, i njih dvoje zapadnu u oboma dobro poznati šablon grozne, zlostavljačke, uzajamno zavisničke veze. Njegov lik zasnovan je (kažu ljudi da nije moglo biti greške u prepoznavanju) na Noelu Parmentelu koji je mladoj Džoun bio mentor, više-nego-prijatelj i štagod; mogu samo da kažem da ako neko počne svoj svesni odrasli život s takvom osobom... to može dosta kasnijih problema da objasni.

I to je sve osim što bih napomenula da je hrvatski prevod s kraja sedamdesetih, koji nisam uspela da nađem u biblioteci AVAJ, objavljen pod (naizgled senzacionalističkim, a tek da vidite omot) naslovom La norteamericana, što je zapravo mnogo primerenije i tematski i kako god hoćete od molitveničkog originalnog naslova.

This book was a tale of a life story told by someone else who didn't actually know the person. The story opens up with the some confessions and then in few parts we come to know the story as per the knowledge of the narrator.

Very nice tale and a funny thing, I took a refuge from "The Vampire's Diary" series to read this book and lo and behold there's a character called Elena in this book too, though admittedly not a huge part just few mentions in passing.

This was set in a fictional central American country and was nice, you should also give it a chance and see if you like it, I will go and read something else and then Keep on Reading.

People who don't read generally ask me my reasons for reading. Simply put I just love reading and so to that end I have made it my motto to just Keep on Reading. I love to read everything except for Self Help books but even those once in a while. I read almost all the genre but YA, Fantasy, Biographies are the most. My favorite series is, of course, Harry Potter but then there are many more books that I just adore. I have bookcases filled with books which are waiting to be read so can't stay and spend more time in this review, so remember I loved reading this and love reading more, you should also read what you love and then just Keep on Reading.

Didion is a Conrad fan, so here's her Latin American novel. It's funnier than a Conrad novel, maybe equally absurd. Oh, those wacky Latins and their guns and revolutions!

Charlotte is a new version of Maria from Play It As It Lays, and I guess they're both stand-ins for Didion.

I'm not clear how the narrator could know so many of the private, interior details of the other characters, or who said what to whom in conversations she didn't witness. Grace says that Charlotte's life is an unexamined one, so how did she know what she felt well enough to articulate it to Grace? Or maybe Grace is filling in blanks, trying to be a good witness/testifier, as she says she wants to be on the first page. I'm not sure the narrative structure works with the kind of information Didion wants to provide. I found it occasionally jarring for Grace to remind me that she's narrating the story from sort-of within, to go from Charlotte's life before to the present of the novel with Grace there, telling me about her own issues.

Some beautiful passages, I enjoyed reading it.

As I had recently read The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion, I decided I' wanted to read some of Joan Didion's novels. This is the first one I read.

It's mainly set somewhere in Central America, about an American woman who is living there, for reasons which are never really fully explained, and narrated by another woman who owns almost the whole place.

It's really kind of a strange novel, without much in the way of a discernible plot, and the dialogue is really weird, with most of it not being anything anyone would actually say in real life. I thought it was an ok book, but didn't really love it or anything like that.

I feel late to the game on Joan Didion. I don't think it would be an insult to quickly type her as analogous to Tom Wolfe, at least for this book, though with somewhat more sympathetic characters. This may suggest a difference in world-view, not just an authorial choice, but I can't help thinking of them in the same Upper East Side New York Magazine bubble.

In this 1977 novel, she is a sharp-eyed observer of the decade and cleverly synthesizes a number of its themes. The characters, even when a bit exaggerated, can be complex and memorable.

The narrator, who married into a family that controls half of a fictitious Central American banana republic (now widowed, she controls most of it herself), recounts the story of a 40-ish woman who turned up from California one day and somewhat insouciantly ignored many of the local conventions. The ambassador and the local police find her on a U.S. government list of "people to look out for", the place being enough of a backwater that this is a first. It turns out she is on the list because her daughter has been involved in a Patty Hearst-styled domestic terrorist incident and is now on the run.

There's quite a bit more - without too much footnoted analysis, I think the last couple chapters somewhat ironically juxtapose the revolutionary daughter finally reaching her breaking point in her dreary Rochester squat because the housemates won't clean the fridge, with the dreamy and formerly apolitical mother finally choosing a questionable political stand that results in her death.

Play It as It Lays es la única novela buena —y excelente— de Didion.