The Year of Magical Thinking

By: Joan Didion

Narrated by: Barbara Caruso

Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

National Book Award, Nonfiction, 2005

"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.

The weeks and months that followed "cut loose any fixed idea I had about death, about illness, about probability and luck...about marriage and children and memory...about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion explores with electric honesty and passion a private yet universal experience. Her portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad, will speak directly to anyone who has ever loved a husband, a wife, or a child.

Listen to Joan Didion's full-hour interview with Charlie Rose.

©2005 Joan Didion (P)2005 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

• 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Biography/Memoir
• National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee, Autobiography, 2005

"Many will greet this taut, clear-eyed memoir of grief as a long-awaited return to the terrain of Didion's venerated, increasingly rare personal essays....This is an indispensable addition to Didion's body of work and a lyrical, disciplined entry in the annals of mourning literature." (Publishers Weekly)
"The Year of Magical Thinking is not a downer. On the contrary. Though the material is literally terrible, the writing is exhilarating and what unfolds resembles an adventure narrative." (The New York Times)

Fast narration

I slowed it down to .9x and preferred this speed given the reflective nature of the subject matter.

I Am A Fan…

But this was quite dark. It did leave much to think about. Sad. Deep. What happened to her daughter?

I needed this book

As a recent widow I found this book to be comforting and informative. The author has a simple way to explain complicated issues. Thank you.

Amazing read

Didion is an amazing writer. She takes you a journey of her own grief and helps you understand her place of loss and her assessment of others surrounding her trying to help her through the loss. It’s a beautiful read.

Exquisite

I’ve had this book to read since 2005 and finally just listened to the audible version, superbly narrated by Barbara Caruso. Exquisite in detail and form. A gorgeous rendering of grief and a longtime marriage.

Fantastic as usual

Joan Didion’s account of the year following her husband’s death, with it’s crystalline detail, looking back over our now-ending time with nostalgia, reverence, and some very matter-of-fact commentary is an American treasure.

A tribute to life and grief- immaculate

Both the prose and the performance were remarkable in their vulnerability and honesty. Didion not only created an incredible tribute to the life she shared with her husband, but the everlasting emptiness that follows such a loss. I was very distressed to find that her daughter passed away two months before this book was published. I hope in their version of heaven they are reunited.

How beautiful

What a lovely way to spend a contemplative few days with this book as a companion.

Opinión personal

el audio de la melodía está muy alto, se dificulta escuchar al narrador, pero en general es una historia muy bella que nos hace reflexionar en la pérdida de nuestros seres queridos.

Magnificent. Compelling. Memorable.

Last September my daughter's 41 year old husband lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. As I watched my daughter struggle with her new reality -- single mother, solely responsible, now, for everything, big house, menagerie of animals, not to mention the burden of earning all the income and keeping the family business afloat-- I was seeking ways to help her through a dreadfully painful situation I'd never personally experienced myself. I bought this book to 'preview' for her, hoping that it would turn out to be something she'd take comfort from, too.

That didn't happen. With the tremendous new demands on her time -- not to mention dealing with her own grief and helping her own children through this most difficult situation -- my poor daughter doesn't have time to read or even listen to much of anything these days. But as for me, I loved this book. I couldn't stop listening, finding it to be so insightful, so interesting, so profound that many parts of it will "stick" with me, forever.

And in a way, it did help my daughter, too, because while she hasn't read the book, I see her doing, and saying, some of the very same things that Joan Didion reports herself doing and saying. There is indeed a process of grieving, which obviously does differ from person to person, but which apparently includes many commonalities, too.

Now I understand better what really lies behind some of the things my daughter is doing -- like wanting to keep everything of her husband's just exactly the way he left it, to do everything just the way he did it, to keep everything (it would seem) in readiness -- because there is some lingering, almost unconscious, thought in there somewhere that he just might come back. And yes, as Ms. Didion says, she knows that's not true; that thinking that way makes no sense whatever, and also that this stage isn't permanent, but now I see how a part of the process of grieving plays itself out.

Would I have read/listened to this book if grief hadn't entered our family? Probably not, I'm not a dedicated fan of Ms. Didion, although now I may see out some of her other books I haven't read, just for the pleasure of absorbing the sheer simplicity and heartfelt clarity with which she writes. Whatever, this is a lovely, not-terribly-sad, but profoundly insightful account of one widow's journey.

And one more thing: I normally don't care for musical accompaniment or transitional interludes in audiobooks, I tend to want the narrator to just read the book. But there are moments in this recording where an exquisite piano solo eases a transition from one chapter to another that greatly enhances the mood of the book. It's just really well done. The whole thing is well done.

I highly recommend this perfectly-narrated book to anyone who has an interest, for whatever reason.