Joan Didion
Paperback | Pages: 227 pages Rating: 3.89 | 132194 Users | 9879 Reviews
Mention Regarding Books The Year of Magical Thinking
| Title | : | The Year of Magical Thinking |
| Author | : | Joan Didion |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Vintage International (US / Canada) |
| Pages | : | Pages: 227 pages |
| Published | : | February 13th 2007 by Vintage (first published September 1st 2005) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Autobiography. Memoir. Biography. Biography Memoir |
Narrative During Books The Year of Magical Thinking
'An act of consummate literary bravery, a writer known for her clarity allowing us to watch her mind as it becomes clouded with grief.'From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.
Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.
This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."
Declare Books In Favor Of The Year of Magical Thinking
| Original Title: | The Year of Magical Thinking |
| ISBN: | 1400078431 (ISBN13: 9781400078431) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | United States of America |
| Literary Awards: | National Book Award for Nonfiction (2005), Puddly Award for Nonfiction (2006) |
Rating Regarding Books The Year of Magical Thinking
Ratings: 3.89 From 132194 Users | 9879 ReviewsCommentary Regarding Books The Year of Magical Thinking
Disclaimer: Being fresh into the grieving process myself, you may want to skip this review and head onto others. Undoubtedly I'll purge my grief in a review about a book on grief. You've been warned. Right off the top I will say this for the book: raw, powerful, honest, amazing. If you have any interest in the grief process, READ THIS BOOK. The only criticism that I might have is that there's a lot of name dropping. Insert famous names and some fancy locations (Beverly Hills, Malibu), talk aboutThis is a hard book for me to review, as I know my own personal experience will be foremost. A big thank you to a wonderful friend who sent this to me after the loss of my own partner three weeks ago. So yes, this book is about grief and loss. It is Didion's own personal journey after the loss of her husband. The first lines in her memoir begin..."Life changes fast.Life changes in an instant.You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.The question of self-pity."Those words resonated with
Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of waves. I cannot remember when I was last so moved by a book. It covers a sad subject, that of death with the subsequent grief and mourning periods but it amazed me with its lucidity of a woman who wrote this book a year after her husbands death.
You might think of me as a cynic. If youre being kind, that is. Im the one that says Seriously? when being told of some tragic event--like someone would actually make up the horrific thing. Im the one that views the whole process of death--the telling, the grieving, the service of any kind, the after-- as playing out like Im in a soap opera bubble. Which camera should I look into when I break down again? Strike one against me.Strike Two: I've never been much of a fan of Joan Didion... I think it
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
Hated it, hated it, hated it- but kept reading with the hope that all my pain and suffering would somehow be worth it in the end. It wasn't. The same self-pitying, whiney, depressing, self-important sentiments are basically repeated over and over again only with different words. Joan Didion can obviously write well, but she should have left this cathartic piece in her closet. And I'm not averse to reading novels that deal with grief. This one was just way too self-indulgent and redundant for me.
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan DidionThe Year of Magical Thinking (2005), by Joan Didion (b. 1934), is an account of the year following the death of the author's husband John Gregory Dunne (19322003). The Year of Magical Thinking was immediately acclaimed as a classic book about mourning. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriageand a life, in good times and badthat will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.عنوانها:
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