Name: The Year of Magical Thinking
Rating: 3.909952606635071 (422 reviews)
ISBN: 9781400078431

Joan Didion

An autobiographical portrait of marriage and motherhood by the acclaimed author details her struggle to come to terms with life and death, illness, sanity, personal upheaval, and grief.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. Days later, the night before New Year's Eve, John suffered a massive and fatal coronary. This is a portrait of marriage, and life, in good times and bad.

A Holder

what a beautiful meditation on grief as a representation of cognitive shock. the obsession behind reexamining small details repetitively in a desperate attempt to rewrite reality is such a powerful sentiment to trauma in grief. im in awe with how beautiful this is written.

this idea of cyclical writing here to signify the shock that freezes the mind in place which places the narrative to continuously circle back to the moment of trauma repetitively throughout the process is soooo captivating. so many anchor points i highlighted because they are so stunning! didion is attempting to dissect her own temporary madness using clinical precision here while diagnosing her husband with herself. i can’t help but feel so heartbroken yet so captivated with how trauma can also derive the sensual art in your broken soul.

what a beautiful meditation on grief as a representation of cognitive shock. the obsession behind reexamining small details repetitively in a desperate attempt to rewrite reality is such a powerful sentiment to trauma in grief. im in awe with how beautiful this is written.

this idea of cyclical writing here to signify the shock that freezes the mind in place which places the narrative to continuously circle back to the moment of trauma repetitively throughout the process is soooo captivating. so many anchor points i highlighted because they are so stunning! didion is attempting to dissect her own temporary madness using clinical precision here while diagnosing her husband with herself. i can’t help but feel so heartbroken yet so captivated with how trauma can also derive the sensual art in your broken soul.

From one of America's iconic writers, 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. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion.

That was tough. I was somehow sent back to my own memories and grieving reading this, like I was immersed with her in this process of trying to get the sense of things again. At a certain point, though, it felt a bit too repetitive and filled with "unnecessary" details to me, but then I kept remembering the context and that it wasn't  merely a story. It was life reorganizing itself.

Matheus Lavinscky 

That was tough. I was somehow sent back to my own memories and grieving reading this, like I was immersed with her in this process of trying to get the sense of things again. At a certain point, though, it felt a bit too repetitive and filled with "unnecessary" details to me, but then I kept remembering the context and that it wasn't  merely a story. It was life reorganizing itself.



Kira

Parts of this book are so raw and intimate and so beautifully written I kept having to swallow back my own feelings and memories. While the writing itself is incredible there are passages and chapters I had to work through to finish. It doesn’t mean they weren’t necessary to Didion to write but I think as reader some of them were not very helpful to understanding her and rather seemed a bit like her going on tangents because she could not face the feelings beneath the situations that provoked those specific memories. Still a very solid 3.5/4 stars and would recommend to people interested in perspectives on grief and life. It definitely makes you reflect on your own grief and outlook on life.

Greg Talbot

Sometimes a book connects with you in a way you never imagined, and feels like someone wrote a piece of your own history. Didion's beautiful and honest portrait of the year following her husband's death is introspective, unfiltered in emotion, and healing. The magical thinking is the omnipresence of her husband John Gregory Dunne, and the traces she finds of him everywhere. From poem fragments, to underlined scribbles, to a mysterious penciled in '3' Didion exams her own grief and relives her marriage in all its ragged glory. There is another tragedy forced upon her, one that informs our portrait of Didion, and her coping through an undoubtedly difficult time. I admire her strength in discussing the ordinary. We sense she frames the tragedy, and in some ways her life, and uses her writing to cope with this experience. Didion's work feels revealing because she writes about her experience with difficult questions. How does she move on from this? Is this self-pity acceptable? How do you share grief when so much of what happens is "off stage" in hospital. There isn't much in the book to say about acceptance, and we get a sense of a different kind of healing. Not a cheesy 12 step plan, but a revealing of deeper commitment to loved ones. And there is a brooding sense that Didion's tragedies have not ended with her husband's passing. There is so much dignity found in the search, so much honesty and beauty in the suffering. Didion never flinches, even when she reveals weak moments. It reminds us we too will face similar challenges.

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.

cass

i genuinely think this might be one of the saddest book i've ever read. and didion isn't even an innately sad writer, her essay collections are exquisitely thought provoking, yeah, but nothing at all like this memoir which i found to be inherently very emotional in its topic. this destroyed me to say the least. i just finished it and i think i just need to sit and stare at a wall. 

the way didion recounts everything into the pages makes it feel like a direct excerpt from her brain. her exploration of grief is self-intuitive, genuine and utterly perfect through the non-linear feel that truly represents grief in the rawest way. the way she is able to pull apart grief as concept and dishointedly piece it back together is so moving and emotional and oh my god. 

the only thing that made it lose a fraction off of 5 stars for me was down to my personal preference to in the drive behind a book, i get the most pleasure out of reading a character exploration that is dependent on the hinges of a plot. obviously as a memoir, it approaches this differently to a novel, but i lost a bit of drive in the middle as she strayed away from details. that being said this is an objectively perfect memoir. joan didion is a god amongst men in her prose. literally everyone has to read something by this woman because oh my god you are missing out.

Nadine MacDonald

No matter who we are or how we live, we almost all experience grief the same. “Until now I had been able only to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention.” The name dropping didn’t bother me, because I didn’t know who the people were. It’s her book, so of course she’s not going to lie about where she’s lived and with whom she’s made friends.

Jennifer

One star for some nicely worded sentences and one more star for making me feel feelings at a couple of points. Other than that, I struggled to feel empathy for a privileged, boastful, rich, white woman who had nothing better to do with her time than to think about herself.

jujur bacanya istighfar 🩷 MY HEART HURTS

Saffy

I've written all over the pages, going through my feelings while she was going through hers and it felt like such an intimate reading. The way grief was portrayed in this book is so real, so raw and genuine... Someday everything truly just changes, in a simple moment that will never get to be so simple as a memory ever again. 

Larissa Campos

I've written all over the pages, going through my feelings while she was going through hers and it felt like such an intimate reading. The way grief was portrayed in this book is so real, so raw and genuine... Someday everything truly just changes, in a simple moment that will never get to be so simple as a memory ever again. 

* A book I can't wait to lend to the love of my life, with my thoughts all over it

First audiobook I’ve read with music playing at some parts 😹😹 lowk a snooze fest I feel like I’m not wise enough for this yet but it was kinda wholesome 

Angeleeka

an easy but heartbreaking read, which i guess makes it not so easy. the language is smooth and makes you understand the illogical thinking behind grief, the realisation that we cannot prevent it no matter how hard we try. sobering. don’t know if i could reread this 

Ianna Chia

i picked this up for no reason i can recall. interesting to read such a detailed account of a personal experience, i liked hearing about someone else’s logic and thought processes in such depth. i often got the feeling that more context about the author’s life/marriage/other works would have been helpful, so i will probably read more about those things

julia

This book is so profound and raw, and I loved the stream of consciousness way of writing. The constant repetition and call backs to the concept of turning back time / time stopping highlighted the obsession that grief can bring. 

Had to take a minute to digest it but I was so enamoured, I finished the book in 2-3 days. Thoroughly enjoyed it and will be reading more of her works.

This book is so profound and raw, and I loved the stream of consciousness way of writing. The constant repetition and call backs to the concept of turning back time / time stopping highlighted the obsession that grief can bring. 

Had to take a minute to digest it but I was so enamoured, I finished the book in 2-3 days. Thoroughly enjoyed it and will be reading more of her works.

You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that.

This book may not have been life-changing, but it really was the first time in my life I've found someone who has the same line of thinking as I do. I would not have guessed to have found it in a writer known during the 60s but here we are. Didion tackles grief in such a didactic way as if it was a handwoven basket, carefully interleafing in each thread through an advanced weaving technique that allows it to create a beautiful pattern. I've never read a book thus far that handled grief in such a way. It was so refreshing, like I could relate to it in some way; even though, it never really happened to me. What is it in us that we shine light on people who try to hide their grief well? What is it in us that doesn't allow grief to be fully seen or heard? Why can't we ever allow ourselves to fully face the truth? 

You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that.

This book may not have been life-changing, but it really was the first time in my life I've found someone who has the same line of thinking as I do. I would not have guessed to have found it in a writer known during the 60s but here we are. Didion tackles grief in such a didactic way as if it was a handwoven basket, carefully interleafing in each thread through an advanced weaving technique that allows it to create a beautiful pattern. I've never read a book thus far that handled grief in such a way. It was so refreshing, like I could relate to it in some way; even though, it never really happened to me. What is it in us that we shine light on people who try to hide their grief well? What is it in us that doesn't allow grief to be fully seen or heard? Why can't we ever allow ourselves to fully face the truth? 

Princess Doe 

3.5/5. While not the most transformative depiction of grief, it’s still worth it for anyone who may want to deal with grief

Louisa

I think I might read this again and then review it.

cried a lot and I never cry when reading so that tells you all you need to know 🙂‍↕️

The Year of Magical Thinking

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