In coming to my Dad's house to take care of some estate and property issues, I decided to dive into his library a bit -- I found a first edition of A BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER on the shelves and pulled it to read, knowing he had mixed feelings on Didion in general and this was a literary disagreement between us.

I loved A BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER and connected to it much more easily than I did to PLAY IT AS IT LAYS, which I find remote and hard to invest in. It could be because now, as a mother, I'm more readily aligned with Charlotte Douglas and able to sympathize with her maternal traumas while sharing Didion's disapproval of her foibles. I openly cried during a pivotal scene featuring the death of a newborn, and found the scathing, nuanced, complex portrayal of the generational foibles of mid-to-late 20th century American to be insightful and searing. Complex, easily readable, and razor sharp. Recommended.

The characters in this novel have the curious habit of talking past each other constantly. They just exchange long sequences of non sequiturs in a way that actual humans almost never do. It feels like a forced sort of artiness and grates on the reader.

Charlotte is a very flat and lifeless character. The blows she’s taken from modern life have wrung her out, reducing her to an automaton, shuffling through history towards her eventual doom. This book is a despairing cry against bad governments and the equally bad revolutions they give rise to. A grim portrait of corruption and revolutionary violence in the late 20th century with all it’s senseless waste and misery.

The best thing of hers I've read. Didion distills all her experience into this compelling, hypnotic story - part mystery, part existential adventure, part political thriller. Her prose shifts like the sands, conjures dreamlike scenarios, transcends time, & is always masterful. An American woman in an unstable Central American nation attempts to unravel the details & discover the reasons behind the disappearance of her fellow countrywoman. Ultimately resolution is elusive & nothing is solved, but what stands is a meditation on human frailty, relationship dynamics, powerlessness, & the triumph of the omnipresent unknown.

Easily the most depressing thing I've read in years (with the possible exception of the collected stories of Amy Hempel, which, as the NYT review says, should not be read all in one go). Woman lives life barely connected to it, dissembles, is used, lives life of quiet desperation, eventually ends up in soul-crushing tropics to die.

I CAN'T FINISH IT. No really, I don't do this with books, but I'm stopping with 100 pages to go. Sorry, Charlotte, I just can't bring myself to see what (or rather, how) happens to you in the end.

Well-written -- it's not that I didn't like the prose. But shit, I can't finish.

If this is typical Didion I'm not going to read any more of her.