The Year of Magical Thinking: A candid memoir navigating grief and self-discovery (Collins Modern Classics) Paperback – 13 May 2021

Didion gives us the privilege of spending a year with her. A year in which her husband dies of a massive heart attack at the table as they sit down for dinner, and a year in which her only child hangs onto life by a thread in intensive care suffering from one potentially fatal illness after another.Didion's prose is always lucid, but here the crisp journalistic approach to her subject is muted by her personal odyssey, her frantic need to try to understand and get to grips with events and feelings that are not as easily pinned down or understood as the hard facts and figures she reads and writes about, trying to give herself something to use as an anchor point in her rapidly disintegrating life.Other reviewers have commented on her lack of warmth, her obsessive compulsion to log the minutiae of the days that follow her husband's death and suggested that this means that she is cold. Far from it in my opinion. At the beginning of the book she talks about the strange split in one's psyche when someone close to you dies, the feeling that the world has shattered apart and will never be the same again. Yet at the same time one is obliged to continue living life as if unaffected because our modern sensibilities do not allow for outpourings of raw grief. Then there is the fact that even if we grieve more ostentatiously, the world with all its drab little facts continues turning whether we like it or not.Didion walks the tightrope between a grief so profound that she dare not throw away her husband's shoes in case he comes back and needs them, and the fact that she has to be present in the world for her daughter. She clings to the pragmatic, to the facts, like a drowning woman grabbing a life raft. Her prose is exquisite, much like her pain. An astonishing book.

Very heart-breaking because of what happened subsequently to her daughter after publication ( I heard this on the radio 4).... but for me personally, who had also recently lost a husband, it was a comfort to read that my symptoms & phobias were not particular to me.... e.g. a feeling that you get just before crying, but which in our case just stayed & choked one without the relief of tears. I had never read about that one before. It was very therapeutic therefore, for me to know she felt it too...... and whilst I read this book, it became for awhile my best friend.

This book is hypnotic and full of sharp, imposing shards of prose that reflect the author's conscious and unconscious responses to losing her life partner. The smoothness of the journey is a testament to the craftsmanship, because the subject-matter is devastating and arrests one with prismatic reflections and repetitions of phrases still wistfully regnant in the nostalgic memories laid forth in the text. I had been drawn to this book having (entirely by chance - perchance a magical parallel) come upon a copy of the author's Blue Nights, and was struck by the force of the prose considering its deceptive simplicity. I would encourage readers both with an ear for interesting-metered American English, and those who have ever wondered how to cope with the entropy of losing someone they hold fondly, to give this a try. The book is broken up into short chapters which aid reflection and also add to the effect of scenic shifts.

I haven't read much Joan Didion so have no markers to steer by, but this book was rubbish and fabulous, repetitive and singular, funny and heartbreaking in equal measure, all the way through. The single word I think I'd use to describe it is 'Lonesome'. Because it is. I admired her fortitude as well as weakness, her grief as well as her (few) joys, and I can only think it was written as both a cathartic and a learning experience.Despite these weasel words, read it anyway.

Having lost my son to cancer, this book helped me to understand what I was going through. I’ve since recommended it time after time.Quite wonderful.

I had no intention to buy or read this book. It popped up on screen at a reduced price through Bookbub. I'd heard of the author's name and reputation so I just looked at the first few pages in the preview and...And that was that.Hooked. Book bought. Book read straight away, leaving other books-in-progress on the shelf. The author treads the narrow line of self-indulgence while she just lets rip about her mental state after the sudden deathof her husband and the serious illness of their daughter. The book is quietly moving. Another reviewer here has said devastating and they're right.

She is a wonder of a writer. Unafraid, connected and able to draw comparisons and thoughts across many subjects. This books charts the messy nature of love and mutual dependence in long-term relationships and how grief is something you grow around but never really goes away.

I bought this book because Joan Didion was a chosen author on a TV programme.I didn't fully realise what the subject matter would be - an account of the year following the death of the author's husband - but I found the book engaging and insightful.I am not a widow, but I have a friend who lost her husband last year, and although I didn't feel it was my place to recommend she read the book, I mentioned its existence to her. Having read it myself I found I was able to recognise and sympathise with some of what was happening to her.The book is well structured and well written.