The Year of Magical Thinking

De: Joan Didion

Narrado por: Barbara Caruso

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.

©2005 Joan Didion (P)2005 HighBridge Company

Reseñas de la Crítica

• 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)

Great book to Read, but I didn’t like it

I am very glad I read this book, and would recommend it to any adult, but I didn’t like it. It is about grief and loss and a very bad year. Modern American culture does not openly discuss grieving very well, and this is a rare well written book that carefully regards grief. The author packs in a lot of truth about the grieving process that everyone should know, before they have to go through it themselves. It is my opinion every young adult should read this (and A Grief Observed and Being Dead) just to get them ready for what it grief will be like. Grief is an important part of life, and should be prepared for. This is mostly beautifully written, and completely beautifully narrated. I laughed out loud several times, and became slightly verklempt a few times, but didn’t cry.

Usually when I finish a book, I immediately start a new book. Every now and then I finish a book and I feel a need for some time to process it. This was one of those books.

The author did a very good job describing the myriad of feelings and behaviors associated with grief. Yet, I did not agree with what the author presumed about grief and what she felt to do about grief. The author says near the end of the book “there comes a point at which you must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.” This is said at the end of the author’s first year of dealing with grief, so is understandable (yet is still, I think, a misunderstanding). I believe you should never let them go, you should keep them, and keep them alive AND keep them dead, both, always. I hope the author learns this part over time. I think she will.

The author describes the conditions of grief but does not seem to give grief the respect it deserves, and sometimes even seems to consider grief may be a treatable derangement or pathological condition. I do not. I feel normal grief is a natural process in which the brain systematically revisits the all the memories and plans related to the loss, adjusting them for the loss. Grief is hard and important work for the brain, which takes time, and enormous subconscious effort. The external signs of grief can look like depression, and depression can sometimes coexist with grief, but these are two quite different conditions.

The narration is really excellent. Completely clear and enjoyable, with wonderful expressiveness of the numbness, desperation, nonbelief, fears, and humor associated with grieving.

Better: Good Grief

While I enjoyed this book, I think Good Grief by Lolly Winston does a better job of allowing you inside the grief process -- including a very memorable scene of showing up to work in pajamas; knowing it is not right, but unable to stop yourself.
The Year Of Magical Thinking is less about the process of grief and more about memoir and memory. In the end, I wasn't sure where the main character was in her "grief" or what she had been through. Just a lot of snapshots of life before and after the loss. Perhaps that is all it is meant to be.

A beautiful work, beautifully read.

Simply, a brilliantly clear, wrenching account. Deeply moving, never sentimental or manipulative, Didion uses exact descriptions, exact language to tell her story. Not a word is out of place. It's also one of the best read books. The narrator is fantastic.

Good but doesn't really go anywhere

The title of my review probably hints that I didn't really like it but I did give the book 4 stars because I found it really enjoyable. I just want to warn people who want their books to "climax" that this book doesn't do that. Some people want the characters to learn great life lessons and make huge changes and take big risks in their life and this book is not about that kind of thing, mostly because it is a memoir that tells a story about the grief process. People who have experienced the death of a dearly loved one will resonate with this book and people who have not experienced that kind of loss may not be able to relate. I personally loved it and found it deeply moving.

good book for a fresh death

she does a good job of sharing the immediate experience, and how that changed for her over the course of a year. the way places and sensory input sparks emotion and memory is vivid. I especially like how Joan paints herself as some what removed and reserved because when the grief begins to impact her it's pretty good.