Book Review: ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ by Joan Didion

This book is the personal account of the year Joan Didion spent grieving following the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Dunne. During the same period, Didion also had to deal with the serious illness of their daughter, Quintana. She finished writing the book on the first anniversary of her husband’s death.

Didion’s style is one of detached analysis as she retrospectively explores what was going through her mind at the time and tries to piece together the details of half-remembered events. Early on, she makes the important point that grieving is different from mourning:

Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blow the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

By the end of this remarkably candid book, perhaps as a result of writing the book, Didion seems to have managed to make some sort of transition from grief to mourning.

An astonishing book.