The Year of Magical Thinking

This may be the smoothest prose I've ever met, with movements under and between the lines and words that touch me. (Note: I don't give fives.) - Wm

Her honesty about the death of her husband is compelling and makes her story transcendent in so many ways. This is a great book for those reasons; and the clarity of writing is luminous in describing a journey so dark.

Raw, bare, insightful. Didion processes her grief and fear over her husband's abrupt death and her daughter's life-threatening illness as only she can. Her commitment to the truth, even as she observes her own denial is gripping. Strangely enough the book is powerfully authentic without being weepy or morose. It just is what it is: the relentless chronicle of one of the darkest times a human being has to face in their lives. She comes to the end, not having left the grieving behind, but having observed and embraced the process of grieving as only an extremely intelligent and self-aware woman is capable of doing. Somehow she manages to make the fear of losing a loved one seem mysterious and natural, like breathing or giving birth. We lose those who matter most to us, and in doing so we are changed in small but essential ways that most of us can never adequately explain to strangers.

This isn't necessarily where you want to be introduced to Didion. But, oh, what insights into the process of grieving and coming to terms with death. Beyond that, Didion is a marvelous writer.

Joan Didion trains her clinically detached powers of observation and amazing descriptive skills inward and delivers a forceful meditation on grief, loss, and the mental upheaval of losing a loved one (in her case, husband John Gregory Dunne).

Didion's prose has always reminded me of Cool Jazz -- spare, virtuosic, sometimes controlled to a fault, and distinctly Southern Californian. (Decades as a New Yorker, and in the pages of Vogue, Life, and The New Yorker haven't changed that.) I don't think she uses the word "love" once in this memoir of mourning her soulmate (another word she'd never use), but she makes her devotion, loss, and its emotional aftermath abundantly clear.

The book will resonate with anyone who's suffered the loss of a partner (and the rest of us who inevetably will) .

A telling account on how life can change in an instant. Interesting commentary about the health care system and how, in many cases, we, or our family members, must become our own practitioners.

This book garnered so much attention that my friends and family were talking about it. It is a compelling read - the sheer emotion, and the graceful interweaving of medical information. I was irritated by the constant repetition but I understand that that is how the mind works. Required reading for memoir / creative nonfiction but I read it on my own before being assigned.

something I read in my fruitless search to make sense of unexpected death....only helped in that I felt less alone

Brutally realistic. Didion doesn't shrink from relating the grief and feelings of unbelief she experienced when her husband suddenly died. Tough reading but important work.

If you are grieving or have ever grieved deeply, I believe you'll relate to at least some of this book. Grief is such a personal journey and anyone who's been there has something sacred to share. This is a glimpse into the sacred.