A love story in my book. Loved. Her writing is like an anchor for my soul.

Actual rating: 3.5 stars.

This book is difficult to rate, because it's pretty far outside of my typical read. I read it based on the glowing recommendation of someone I greatly respect.

To be honest, I wasn't enamored of the first couple of chapters. They felt almost pretentious, and I was already on high alert for excessive navel-gazing, considering that this is one of the primary reasons I typically avoid contemporary literary fiction. But fortunately, enough of Joan Didion's skill came through that I kept going.

And it's fascinating. I was told Didion is a more efficient version of Ernest Hemingway, that she in fact did writing exercises with his work to make them even leaner--and that immediately interested me, because how? Reading this, I see what that means. The prose is extremely sparse, and there are many small details that demand a closer look and reread. In that way, it actually demands more of the reader and takes longer to read than some novels that are much longer.

On the surface, Democracy includes a lot of elements I normally hate about contemporary literary fiction: the midlife crisis, the extramarital affair, and substance abuse--but the prose is so economical that it prevents the narrative from ever becoming too gratuitous in terms of suffering or self-loathing or whatnot.

There are some very interesting observations here about life and people, and particularly how those evolve throughout the course of a crisis. The famous observation about the cost of public life being memory, which is brilliant, of course; but also those intangible qualities, those distinct idiosyncrasies, that draw Inez and Jack together, and the ways in which Jessie and Adlai differ, and so on.

I'm still not totally convinced I love the narrative structure and how Didion inserts herself into it. I have great respect for the traditional narrative form, and while I'm not against experimentation, I have a fairly high bar for it before it drops into simply unbearable pretense. But Didion does it all very well, and it lends the narrative a greater sense of realism, and almost, even, permanence. So I acknowledge that.

Finally, I'll note that I have a background in some of this, and am frankly a bit astonished at how exceptionally well-researched this is--to include some of the mundane details of embassy work and how US government agencies work overseas. All in all, a worthwhile read, if not necessarily a wholly absorbing or gripping one.

yes :/ "a family in which the colonial impulse had marked every member" :////// read instead of “studying” “torts" so consider this my apology for setting into motion the chain of events that led to joan didion’s death (when i said on 12/22/21 in mcnally jackson, picking up and putting down a copy of democracy, that i could not deal with her!!!)

Confusing at first but beautifully written, Didion sasses the shit out of you.

I do not know (in words) how to describe this book. Perhaps on my second read-through.

Definitely my favorite Didion novel.

criminally underrated and overcritiqued didion novel. people should write metafiction more often!

2.5 rounded up to 3

The author's profile page states: “Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work.”

Joan Didion's writing style is very different, rapid fire sentences are short and to the point. The quote from the author's page fits this book to a T. I never really connected to this story or any of the characters. It is about a dysfunctional family and the story is about “disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos.” It also takes place during the turbulent times of the Vietnam War.

Part one
“After the events which occurred in the spring and summer of 1975 I thought of it differently. I thought of it as the essential mechanism for living a life in which the major cost was memory. Drop fuel. Jettison cargo. Eject crew.”

Part two
“You were only the voice of a generation that had taken fire on the battlefields of Vietnam and Chicago after you knew you didn't have the numbers. In addition to which. Moreover. Actually that was never your generation. Actually you were older.”

I enjoyed the documentary “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold” much more than I enjoyed this book. Her writing style, at least in this book, is not for me.

Ja mam bardzo wojenną ścieżkę z Didion. Podobały mi się fragmenty o pisaniu i jej osobiste wstawki. Świetnie wykreowana była również Inez, trochę cała jej sytuacja przypominała mi Kobietę zawiedziona de Beauvoir. Natomiast powieści autorki są dla mnie bardzo wyciągnięte z kontekstu historycznego i czasem wręcz klaustrofobiczne w kwestii umiejscowienia akcji. Tutaj i tak było delikatnie lepiej, bo jednak był zarysowany jakiś kontekst prób atomowych i wojny w Wietnamie ale nadal czytelnik pozostaje zatrzaśnięty w bardzo wąskich ramach w tak przecież interesującym okresie historycznym.

Pace was exciting! Hadn't read a plot like this before. I risk ridicule when I say it kind of reminded me of Catcher in the Rye in the pace and the struggle to find satisfaction in life. I'd read another Didion book

Very deep cut Didion. I happened to really like this book just because I’m under the spell of Didion’s prose. However, I think this book is trying to balance two stories: that of a man and woman and her family, which is to say a domestic drama, and a political commentary on the relations between the U.S and Vietnam in 1975. It does one of those stories significantly better than the other. And it’s at the times when Didion gets too much into international jargon speak where the gets mired down dated details and loses the immediacy she aims for. That being said I thought the writing was as beautiful and piercing. Didion uses language like a weapon and it is a pleasure to watch her at work. Stunning sentences and images just come so easy to her. I also enjoyed her meta narrative voice though I am sure this will read as grating to some. Like Play It As Lays, this is mostly no plot just vibes, but lacks Plays It As Lays’ focus and vision.

“fourteen pink dresses all hanging next to each other. didn’t anybody ever tell her? she didn’t look good in pink?”

Towards the end of the book, Joan Didion the narrator calls it "a novel of fitful glimpses", and that about sums up my problem with it. There was rarely a moment when I truly connected to any of the characters or understood where and when they were and what they were doing. The writing was, for the most part, exquisite, as was to be expected. But the spiel of inserting herself as a character did not really work for me. The crumbs we got of the main romantic relationship though...chef's kiss.