“We all remember what we need to remember.”

Utterly devastating. Didion's writing gets its hooks into you from the first page, and doesn't let go. After finishing this book, I had to sit and stare at the wall for a few minutes. She was brilliant.

Recommend: Yes
 
Takeaways:
What a beautifully tragic novel by Didion. Wealthy widow, Grace Strasser-Mendana of Boca Grande (not in Florida but a fictional South American country that’s fraught with political strife and guerrilla attacks) tells the story of Charlotte Douglas, an American woman who sojourns there. Charlotte is deeply grieving. Her coping mechanism for grief is to distract herself with busyness… which “works” until it doesn’t - and you see Charlotte unravel through Grace’s third-party telling of her sporadic and increasingly detached behavior. It is devastating. And who wouldn’t spiral after: Their only child becomes a terrorist. Which rekindles a fatal-attraction-type connection with this child’s father, who is terminally ill. But not before she and her current husband become pregnant with a child who has lethal anomalies, and her partner has no emotional connection to whatsoever. It’s a lot… and as grief does, it surfaces other historical losses that haven’t been dealt with.

Didion does some interesting things… she reveals the story vs. lays it all out, so the book is a discovery process tied to the same basic story, which the narrator summarizes on the first page.

Didion also connects the characters in clever ways, demonstrating how small the world is.

This book was published in 1977 - and while it’s timeless in many ways, it would be fascinating to see how this story would have been crafted by Didion today, given the proliferation of technology and globalization as well as the improved awareness around mental health.

Tidbits:
Didion said she based her novel from the song, "If I Ever Cease to Love You". There is one chapter where this Mardi Gras song is front and center.

Go read Jean-Luke’s review. Pretty much nailed it.

Why I read it: Tommy; MRM Readers
 
Format: Hardback
 
Rating: 4.3
 
Book about books: No.

QUOTES:

“I recall once telling Charlotte about a village in Orinoco where female children were ritually cut on the inner thigh by their first sexual partners, the point being to scar the female with the male’s totem. Charlotte saw nothing extraordinary in this. ‘I mean, thats pretty much what happens everywhere isn’t it,’ she said, ‘Somebody cuts you? Where it doesn’t show?’”

“She could taste the acrid goat cheese her father used to get from the man who ran his cattle on the ranch. Her father had died. She could feel crushed and browning in her hand the camellias her mother used to braid in her hair for birthday parties. Her mother had died.”

“Marin was loose in the world and could leave it at any time and Charlotte would have no way of knowing.”

“She remembered certain days and nights very clearly but she did not remember their sequence. Someone had shuffled her memory. Certain cards were lost.”

“Maybe there is no motive role in this narrative.
Maybe it is just something that happened.
Then why is it in my mind when nothing else is.”

“I think I loved Charlotte in that moment as a parent loves the child who has just fallen from a bicycle, met a pervert, lost a prize, come up in any way against the hardness of the world. I think I was also angry at her, again like a parent, furious that she hadn’t known better, furious that she had been wrong.”

“She remembers everything. She remembers she bled. The wind is up and I will die and rather soon and all I know empirically is I am told.”

“I have not been the witness I wanted to be.”

This was a re-read for me this year. A Book of Common Prayer was the first of Didion's novels that I read and it is certainly my favourite. I particularly enjoy the way Didion employs the cultural differences between Boca Grande and the United States. This novel is quintessential Didion and I liked it even more upon this re-read.

it's a didion girl summer.

finding this book in a beachy bookstore while i was on vacation and needed something to read while sitting by a pool and trying to look mysterious (read: not sunburnt, not uncomfortable, not bored and ready to be the indoor kid i am)...heaven sent.

didion's voice is so strong that i'll always prefer her nonfiction (sorry, play it as it lays, you know you're different).

but this made me feel like an intellectual woman in a 70s book club, which is no kind of bad feeling. it was very of its time in a way that was fun to experience as a one-off read...although enough for me to know that i probably wouldn't have enjoyed a lifetime as a book club member in a groovy disco way.

it had a lot to say, and it did sometimes get bogged down in repetition and an unwillingness to be overt in doing it, but i felt transported. and that is enough!

bottom line: fun while it lasted.

Desarrollada en el ficticio país centroamericano de Boca Grande, la novela de la escritora estadounidense Joan Didion, Una liturgia común, mediante la atenta mirada antropológica de Grace Strasser-Mendana, intenta reconstruir testimonialmente a la extraña y distante turista estadounidense Charlotte Douglas, y en consecuencia, examinar parte de los principales temas que condicionaron el contexto sociopolítico americano de la segunda mitad del siglo XX: Guerrilla, revolución, tráfico de influencias, corrupción y poder, todo bajo la narración de Grace, testigo consciente de la incapacidad de dar testimonio fiel de la historia que trata de reconstruir.

Charlotte, extranjera, esquiva y fuera de códigos comunes, es reconstruida por Grace mediante testigos, recuerdos y conversaciones, permitiéndonos acercarnos difusamente a las causas de sus comportamientos erráticos, los que se encuentran condicionados por la proximidad de la muerte, el abandono y la soledad. Un personaje que vive su propio descenso sin dar explicaciones a quienes le rodean, siendo Grace la única que se permite en su relato, tratar de dar cuenta de una historia que hasta el final del libro no permite descubrirse completamente ante la propia narradora.

"Lo único que me interesa de Charlotte Douglas es lo relacionado con su paso por Boca Grande, porque el significado de su estancia aún se me escapa" (21)

told my brother I was reading a Didion book and he went “of course you are”

Imagine looking at an artist at work. He begins with pencil sketch on an empty paper. Right now with a little imagination we can see what he’s trying to draw, that circle maybe the head, flowing line for hair, the outline of body, arm, feet. Then he picks up his pen. Our artist might decide to start from the face; he has a very clear image in his mind so he works straight away in detail. Eyes, nose, mouth, expression, face outline emerge. Next he moves his hand starting to give detail to locks of hair, the flow, until it’s fused with the face. He continues working in this manner jumping from part to part detailing things connecting separate parts until finally the whole picture is finished and we can see the image he had in mind.

This is how Didion structured her book. She told us right at the beginning what happened to Charlotte, then she began telling us the “extenuating circumstances, weather, cracked sidewalk and paregorina.” She jumped around the timeline but she always anchors it to the timeframe that we already know. Therefore it was not difficult to get the story right.

The story itself is about the life of Charlotte Douglas, a woman who always re-arranges the reality according to what she can bear instead of acknowledging it. It was a dark story full with annoying men that made me want to scream. I almost couldn’t stand most of the conversations since it was so painful seeing Charlotte thrown around by people and circumstances. Not to be read by people with depression tendency.

I checked out some books by Joan Didion after watching the movie The Last Thing He Wanted. Afterward, I looked up the movie for help understanding the plot. Found that my experience of being completely engrossed with the movie but understanding little of what was happening and being left confused--was common.
This book was similar. It was enjoyable to read. Poetic. Descriptive. Actions were introduced and carried to completion, placed amidst reminiscences, flashbacks and jumps forward. Threads of cohesion between actions were introduced and abandoned. The characters were undecipherable, unrecognizable to me, with no discernible motives or coherence to their actions. They were all horrible people. A lot of effort was put into dialogue and plot lines to make them horrible. Only one character I can recall broke through the 4th wall, a clerk who attempted to extract one of the characters from harm.
It's a short book. I read it to the end hoping for something to happen that would tie up the loose ends, in an Owen Meany sort of way. It didn't. I didn't finish Kerouac's On the Road and it reminds me of A Book of Common Prayer. Same racism, sexism--way too much for 1977. Same dysfunctional abusive relationships, same random trajectory driven solely by narcissism and forced absurdity.
I found a quote from Didion, presumably about herself: "You are getting a woman who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest other people. You are getting a woman who somewhere along the line misplaced whatever slight faith she ever had in the social contract, in the meliorative principle, in the whole grand pattern of human endeavor. … I have trouble making certain connections. I have trouble maintaining the basic notion that keeping promises matters in a world where everything I was taught seems beside the point. The point itself seems increasingly obscure."
Makes sense, resonates with what she seems to be trying to say. I do think it was an attempt to tell a story with political relevance. Maybe at the time it was ground-breaking to talk about US interventionism. Maybe it was that same old observation that used to be a late night joke, about the frequency of revolutions in Latin America. I really have no idea.

Several times during Joan Didion's Book of Common Prayer, one character will tell another that they "were wrong." In what almost seems irrelevant. Causes, love, politics, are all compromised. Wrongness is an empty term hardly worth the air it takes to utter the word. Nearly everyone is on the make. Lawyers can champion radical movements one day, hobnob with the beautiful people that night, and fly to Miami the next in order to seal a deal for Mirage jets. Air head college students join revolutionary movements and become air headed revolutionaries. Government bureaucrats (especially the ones overseas) are probably CIA. Didion's take on the 70s is razor sharp, and told through the forensic voice of Grace Strasser-Mendana, a rich and dying widow, who becomes fascinated with the personality and predictable fate of the neurotic bundle of nerves named Charlotte Douglas. Charlotte is both fleeing herself and searching for her Weatherman-like daughter. Boca Grande, an unstable Central American country, is as good a place as any for the unruly daughter to show up, or a grave to embrace you.

For a slim book, Didion packs a lot of story, perhaps too much, as she spends, arguably, too much time on Charlotte's first husband, Warren Bogart, an epic, poetry quoting asshole. Warren is one of the most abusive characters I've run across in all of literature (and I've read a lot). Didion knows this as well, and lingers a bit too long. But when the Didion (via Grace) put down comes, it goes to the bone -- and beyond. In a way I suppose it's worth it since Warren finally shuts his mouth. As I said, it's the 70s. Booze, drugs, threesomes in bed, machine guns, dinner parties, and cholera epidemics. Didion covers it all, and does so with admirable economy. I saw where some reviewers compared "Common Prayer" to Roth's American Pastoral. Well, in a way (daughters gone bad) it does, but for my money, Didion is much closer to the ground in capturing what the 70s were like. If you are a fan of Conrad's Nostromo, or Robert Stone's Flag for Sunrise, Didion's brutal examination of things American and Central American is a must read.

Charlotte Douglas, in transito.

La bella e misteriosa Charlotte, la fica norteamericana, come la chiamerà con disprezzo uno dei padroni del luogo, arriva a Boca Grande, la città in cui la luce è abbagliante e seducente, senza un perché, in fuga dalla vita, ma molto più probabilmente in transito, com'è sempre stata in ogni luogo ove abbia messo radici. O forse per restare per sempre.
Ce la racconta Grace, anche lei norteamericana, erede e moglie dell'ultimo grande padrone di Boca Grande, l'unica che in qualche modo sembra volerla comprendere, l'unica che anche dopo, pur senza averla mai amata, continuerà a cercare di raccontarla, di scoprirla, che esordisce dicendo Testimonierò per lei.
E la sua voce, che ci accompagna per tutto il romanzo, è a volte dolente, carezzevole, altre sprezzante, a tratti caustica e disincantata, ma sempre precisa, netta.
Altre volte si assottiglia, invece, fino a scomparire, e io ne ho sofferto l'assenza, perché «Diglielo da parte mia» non è il romanzo che sembrava essere dopo aver letto le prime pagine, ma tutt'altro, tutta un'altra storia, e il suo accompagnarmi, il suo tenermi per mano, mi rassicurava e mi faceva intravedere comunque la luce.
Boca Grande non esiste, ma è sempre esistita, «terra di grandi contrasti», ipotetico paese latinoamericano simbolo della bellezza accecante di tutti i paesi del Sudamerica e del Centroamerica, luoghi in cui dagli Stati Uniti ci si recava in cerca del buen retiro, o per vendere armi ai ribelli, o per sostenere i governi dittatoriali, o solamente per fuggire dalla vita. O per ritrovarla.
E Charlotte, sensuale e ingenua, ricca e viziata, ma anche il suo esatto opposto, capace di uccidere una gallina strangolandola a mani nude o di eseguire una tracheotomia in abito da sera, o di mettersi al servizio della povera gente per vaccinarla contro il colera, Charlotte con i suoi due mariti e le sue relazioni, in transito anch'esse, Charlotte con Marin, una figlia mai conosciuta davvero, in fondo voleva solo che le «cose andassero bene», come chiedeva al suo Dio in quelle preghiere comuni, semplici e consuete, quasi banali, forse le common prayer del titolo originale, che faceva la sera prima di addormentarsi.
Mi è piaciuta la scrittura di Joan Didion, una vera scoperta, uno stile asciutto, essenziale, e quelle frasi cortissime che sembrano incidere come un bisturi, ripetute a volte come un mantra, come una cantilena, che scivola sotto la pelle fino a diventare un'àncora alla quale aggrapparsi.
La sua è una scrittura esatta, sofisticata, magnetica, enigmatica come le azioni di tutti, a Boca Grande e negli Stati Uniti, come i ricordi di Grace, quella Grace che doveva e poteva essere l'àncora di Charlotte.
Avrebbe dovuto aggrapparsi anche Charlotte, a Grace, come ho fatto io.
Avrebbe potuto farlo.
Avrebbe dovuto farlo per tutta la vita.

Tutto quello che so ora è che quando penso a Charlotte Douglas che cammina nel caldo vento notturno in direzione delle luci di Capilla del Mar, sono sempre meno certa che questa sia stata una storia di illusioni.
A meno che le illusioni non fossero le mie.
[…] Non sono stata la testimone che avrei voluto essere.

Joan Didion's A Book of Common Prayer takes place in the U.S. and the Central American republic of Boca Grande (for which read, El Salvador). It is narrated by Grace Strasser-Medana, the American-born expatriate who has married into Boca's leading family. The novel, however, has as its central character Charlotte Douglas, who is alternately haunted by her two husbands, who are too much with her, and her terrorist daughter Marin, who is in hiding.

Like her previous novels, Run River and Play It As It Lays, Common Prayer fixates on a broken female. In the previous novels, abortions figured prominently. Here, there is a live daughter and even a baby who dies quickly; but Charlotte cannot seem to connect up with her.

In the end, Boca Grande undergoes another coup, and Charlotte loses her position of safety. Again, as in the previous novels, Charlotte reminds one of Joan Didion herself, whose slender fragility is her main characteristic.