The Year of Magical Thinking [B1482]

2005 HCDJ 9th printing, in excellent condition. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage-and a life, in good times and bad-that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. One of The New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later-the night before New Year's Eve-the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didion' s attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Love Joan's writing, and how she depicts emotion. This story focused on the emotion of grief, after her husband passes."; "This is an excellent book. Didion's prose is, to me, quite unique. I raced through it but always felt her exactness and emotion. I feel like I will reach for this book when I too experience grief."; "intense and relatable documentation of the weird things grief does to one's mind"; "Talks about love, loss, memory, and how the mind tries to make sense of grief. This is not a fast read - it's raw, intimate, and deeply human. Didion's words linger, forcing you to sit with her sorrow while reflecting on your own life and losses. I read it slowly, with pauses, because every page felt like both a wound and a gift."