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The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
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The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

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3,921106499 (3.86)117
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English (103)  Spanish (1)  Norwegian (1)  Swedish (1)  All languages (106)
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morose and grueling, too indulgent ( )
lonake | Jun 26, 2009 |  
Too close too soon to write about the tragedy by author. I could not finish. Didion is one of my all time favorite authors. Through her I learned about writing and reading. ( )
irisrose | Jun 20, 2009 |  
This is a very well written examination of the nature of grief ( )
somekindofblue | Jun 5, 2009 |  
Raw honesty: The wave of grief takes on many forms. Grief rips into the physical, mental and the emotional well being of a person. Note: there is a long unrecognizable road thru grief before we switch into mourning. This is the reality of a loss and the effort of making a sense of life and of self in an after-loss world. I applaud this author**** ( )
lclc2u | Jun 2, 2009 | 1 vote
This book was prompted by the sudden death of Didion's husband of forty years, John Gregory Dunne. Her "magical thinking" includes the notion, at first not at all evident even to herself, that given the right set of circumstances or the right behavior on Didion's part, her husband will return. Didion attempts to make sense of her thoughts, however irrational. An intellectual enterprise with an emotional core, Didion's investigation is also a rumination on the nature of memory and grief. ( )
andystardust | Jun 1, 2009 |  
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 140004314X, Hardcover)

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.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:02 -0400)

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