The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
A brave account of bereavement following death of a husband, and severe illness of a daughter
“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends,” writes author Joan Didion.
Didion and her husband, John Dunne, had just sat down for dinner in their New York apartment. They were worried about their only child, Quintana Roo, who had suddenly fallen severely ill over Christmas, and for the past five nights was unconscious in an intensive care unit.
In front of the warm flickering flames of a fire, at nine o’clock that evening on Dec. 30, 2003, while Didion is preparing dinner, Dunne suffers a massive heart attack that results in his death.
After 40-years of marriage and almost never apart, this memoir is a brave attempt to make sense of the period that followed as a widow.
Told with frankness and movement, Didion becomes obsessed with the idea of self-pity and its relationship to grief and mourning, as well as the perception from society. The narrative paints a portrait of thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding family, illness, and growing old alone.
Weaving between past and present — from the apartment in New York to Los Angeles, Malibu and Honolulu –Didion attempts to understand how people do and do not deal with the fact life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, and life itself. “Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed,” she writes while doing her spadework and searching for a resolution. “They remember the tree that died, the gull that splattered onto the hood of the car. They live by symbols.” Didion questions if Dunne knew he was going to die. She also reflects on her daughter’s life and the sharp moment Roo awakens from the coma in hospital to hear the news her father is dead.
In order to process this news and to make sense of the world again, Didion must have a solitary year of “magical thinking.” Her haunting memoir is written during this cloudy time of bereavement. It grapples with questions everyone will face at some point in life that forces us to adapt, and eventually, move on.
American author, Joan Didion, won the National Book Award for her heartbreaking memoir, ‘The Year of Magical Thinking.’
She completed the nonfiction a year after her husband died, and her writing flows seamlessly while capturing every stroke of emotion. Didion has written for many award-winning publications that include the New York Times, Vogue, and Life.