The Year of Magical Thinking

I lost my sweetheart, best friend, husband earlier this summer. This was the first book I read/listened to and it was so helpful in helping me understand some of my thoughts and feelings.

These lines first appeared in Joan Didion's memoir of the same title. They migrated to the play version, which is ... moving ... emotionally devastating ... honest and human.Lynn says she will spend the night.I say no, I’m fine.And I am.Until the morning. When I wake up and he still isn’t there.On December 30, 2003, Joan Didion and her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, had come home from the hospital where they had been keeping vigil over the comatose body of their daughter (step-daughter) Quintana, who was in a coma, fighting off pneumonia and advanced septic shock. They got home in early evening and settled in. John was reading a book about the First World War. He had a drink, asked for a second one. He asked her what she’d given him, said she shouldn’t mix liquors. They were sitting across from each other at the table. He was talking and then he wasn’t. She thought he was pulling a joke on her, said, “Don’t do that.” He slumped over. She moved closer, thinking he was choking on something, and he fell face down on the table and then onto the floor. Dark liquid pooled around his face. He was dead. Just like that. And like happens to us when something like that happens, we find it hard to admit change. Because if we don’t admit it, maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe time can be reversed, even though we know it can’t.Quintana recovered, left the hospital. She spoke at the memorial service for John. That was March 23. Two days later, on the 25th, she flew to California with her husband Gerry to visit Malibu. Joan was happy: she wanted her daughter to feel the Malibu breeze blowing across her face again, “wanted her to be a child again.” That evening a friend called, said he was on the way over to her apartment. Joan thought it was about his wife, who had been ill. It wasn’t. It was Quintana. She had stepped off the plane and collapsed on the runway, concussing herself in the process. Plane flight to California. Quintana back in the hospital. ICU.Messages from the neurosurgeon:“Midline shift.”“Brain pushed to the left side.”“Massive arterial bleed.”“Blood everywhere, like a geyser, no clotting factor.”“One pupil was fixed and the other went as we wheeled her in.”Five weeks later, April 30 (my birthday, by the way), she was stable enough to be transferred. Neurorehabilitation. The Rusk Institute, NYU.My call is behind me.I am taking her home.It might take six weeks, even the whole summer and fall, but she will play tennis again.Except she died. June 2005. Another ICU. This one, Cornell’s. Acute pancreatitis. Septic shock. Dead.I did not want the year after either of them died to end.Didion’s a writer. She processes things through writing, through stepping outside herself and observing how she, not some alien subject, reacts. Reaction filtered through observation. So she wrote a book, a memoir, and then this play. When the play was put on, in 2007, the director was playwright David Hare and the sole actor was Vanessa Redgrave, the one-time wife of Joan’s and John’s longtime friend Tony Richardson. Tony’s and Vanessa’s daughter was Natasha Richardson; she was a longtime friend of Quintana. In the middle of the play’s run, Vanessa received a message: her daughter Tasha had been hospitalized as the result of a freak ski accident. Tasha died. Life replicates fiction in emotionally wrenching ways.The only other text I’ve come across recently with a feeling at all similar to this is Joyce Carol Oates’s A Widow’s Story (2011), her memoir of the first year of life after the death of her husband.

I recently lost my husband. So this book was just right for me at this time in my life. I recommend it for anyone in my position.!!!

Related to many of the feelings Joan had after the death of her husband and daughter. My husband died last September and I continue to believe he is coming home.

I did not love it.

I had to read this book for class and actually enjoyed the reading. This autobiographical account of the famous author Joan Didions life is both moving and powerful. I enjoyed reading this book and I recommend this book or the play to anyone that is or having to deal with grief.

Oh, I love Vanessa Redgrave. Everything she does, I watch or listen. I saw first a few clips from her rehearsals on Broadway, found on you tube. Then I read the play. While the disparity between elfin Didian and the statuesque Redgrave are a head shaker, Redgrave sealed the deal with the total pathos of the tragic events of Didion's life. I wish, so much, that this play could be done on screen. The tidbits of you tube are not enough.

Didion is somehow able to describe grief through her own account. Grief shares common threads even though the experience differs from person to person. She puts complex emotions and feelings one could never begin to describe into words, giving those who have expierinced loss a new kind of validation. And she sets the stage for those who have yet to experience loss, giving them a greater understanding of the most complex experience a human being will ever go through.

Incredibly well written. Worth reading.

The parcel is lost and Amzon didn't even have the courtesy to reach out. I am unable to avail refund and the screen is always directed to the home page when I am trying to. Utterly disappointed at this, was really looking forward to the book. Was always a loyal customer, now need to change that!

Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed with this book also (story and everything). I did not enjoy reading this book at all. The only good feeling I got is when I closed the book. I'm glad and sorry I only bought three of her books to read.