Has anyone read "The Year of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion?

Question

And what did you think of it?

One of my professors recommended it, I had never heard of her before this class. I've read about 50 pages so far and it's really, really good.

Answer 1

Didion is one of the most insightful critics of American Culture, and The Year is a unique insight into her personal life. She commands language better than any writer I have read since F.Scot Fitzgerald, and this book has no shortage of perfect phrases or ways of wording things. I think this is a great read for anyone, as we will all experience death of a loved one at some point in life. Didion gives us perhaps the best sense of the harshness of that reality.

Answer 2

I wanted to retitle it "The Year of Confused Thinking." Here's my review that I put on Amazon:
Coping with the grief of her husband's sudden death and the near-death-hospitalization of their only child, Didion wrote this book. As a writer, her instincts were to try sorting the experience into words to make sense of it all.
Excerpts from books of poetry, definitions of death, classical literature, and medical explanations litter the account. She meshes these with her feelings and telling and retelling of the events. Then she mixes in her friends' and doctors' accounts of the events. Even so, she can't turn it into anything constructive or understandable for herself. Her loss is so great that her thinking remains jumbled and her actions at times illogical.
Perhaps that is the wisdom of this book; that it shows the efforts of the bereaved person to understand what has happened and the failure to make sense of something (death) that has no reason.
It's interesting as a personal account, yet it was discouraging to me, as the reader, trying to find words of wisdom about the experience of loss.

Answer 3

Yes. Made me very sad. Well written.

Answer 4

No.....but I would be interested to know more of this book, and if, you, yourself, enjoyed the book ??
And why?