Title: The year of Magical ThinkingAuthor: Joan Didion
On a December night, after spending the day by their daughter's bedside in the ICU, Joan Didion and her husband John Dunne return home and go through the ritual of making and sitting down to dinner. Suddenly, Dunne collapses, and within minutes, he's dead.
In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion takes readers through the next, the hardest year of her life; the year in which she finds it hard to accept the ways her life has changed. The Year of Magical Thinking is a very personal book, and although I've never lost a spouse or parent or someone close to me, I could definitely identify with the feelings she has as she watches her adult daughter, Quintana, suffer first from an illness and then from related injuries.
It feels sort of ruthless to criticize a book like The Year of Magical Thinking, especially since Didion's honesty in the face of her experiences is pretty naked, but the main thing that got in my way of really loving the book was that her world view, with wealthy and influential friends, fancy restaurants and expensive hotels, seemed outside my reality and felt a braggy, but that shouldn't and doesn't deter from the fact that Didion writes as therapy and as a testament of her love and as a way to help others who have to face similar shocks in their personal life and does it well.
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