Joan Didion
The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)
Author: Joan Didion
Genre: Nonfiction ("Growing Through" Memoir)
Plot Summary:
One evening after Didion and her husband, John, come back to their New York home after visiting their daughter in the hospital, John has a heart attack just before dinner and dies. Didion describes her unwillingness to accept his death as final, and how she spiraled into a form of insanity. She refuses to get rid of his shoes, because he would need them upon his return. When her daughter, Quintanna, recovers from her extreme flu-like illness, Didion has to break the news to her over and over again before it sinks in. Her daughter decides to spend some time in California, where she grew up, but before she leaves LAX, she falls ill again. Didion rushes out to the hospital in California, where she lives out of a hotel room. Being near where she and John spent the majority of their lives together causes Didion to further sprial into re-living her past with John. Instead of living the day as it is in the present, she tries to remember what happened on that day a year ago with her husband. SPOILER: By the end of the book Didion has succumbed to her life without John a year after the event, but she admits that she cannot imagine entirely letting go and living without the constant reminders of him.
Geographical Setting: California, New York, Honolulu, various hospitals
Time Period: present day (2005)
Appeal Characteristics:
Because both Didion and her late husband are writers, she makes many references to their published works in addition to other literary sources and characters, such as Sir Gawain, T.S. Eliot, Freud, and various grief therapy books. As such, there is a strong literary tone to the book, and Didion's own thoughts are often interrupted by quotations from one of her or John's books. The story flows well and is not difficult to follow, but it is not necessarily linear. Didion jumps back and forth from the present to the past and back again. While the mood is often overwhelmingly sad and depressing, Didion breaks the heaviness up with snippets of her romantic past or endearing conversations that occurred between John and Quintanna. Because of the emphasis on their lives together, the settings in California, Honolulu, and New York are important elements to the story. Quintanna's husband, the hospitals, doctors, and other characters play minor roles, but are a far secondary to Didion, John, and Quintanna. Didion tells an engrossing tale, but the pace moves slowly, allowing the reader to get immersed into the author's world.
Read-alikes: Readers who really enjoy Didion's nonfiction style and want to read something else by her might like to try her classic cultural critique of California, Where I Was From, in which the author contrasts her love of the area that's also disappointed her. However, Didion does not refer to any texts as often as she does to Dutch Shea, Jr. by her husband John Gregory Dunne. It is a fiction novel about a lawyer whose life is turned upside down and whose daughter is murdered by terrorists, and although it will not necessarily read like The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion makes numerous references to its allusions to family and dealing with grief. This will be a good bet for readers who are interested in knowing why this book was so important to Didion's memoir. Although Didion describes how her husband died, most of her book focuses on their lives before his death and her life alone after it. Tom Crider's Give Sorrow Words: A Father's Passage Through Grief similarly focuses on his life after his daughter's death and, like Didion, incorporates quotes and words from literature. Readers who were drawn to the minor celebrity aspect of Didion's life might like to read Celestine Sibley: A Granddaughter's Reminiscence by Sibley Fleming, a memoir about the celebrated writer's public and private life told from her granddaughter's perspective. Readers who find themselves immersed in the love among Didion, John, and Quintanna might like The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss. This is a complex novel about two characters whose lives are intertwined through love, pain, and lonliness.
Red Flags: This book can be pretty depressing and fairly literary, with lots of quotes and references.
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