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The Year of Magical Thinking Kindle Edition

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 11,892 ratings

From one of America's iconic writers, 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. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete sceptic 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 suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of 40 years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LA airport, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Centre 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’. The result is an exploration of an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad.


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From the Publisher

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Review

‘It is the most awesome performance of both participating in, and watching, an event. Even though Didion does not allow herself to break down, only a terribly controlled reader will resist doing the same.’ Independent

‘Ultimately, and unexpectedly for a book about illness and death, this is a wonderfully life-affirming book.’ Observer

‘Searing, informative and affecting. Don’t leave life without it.’ Financial Times

‘This is a beautiful and devastating book by one of the finest writers we have. Didion has always been a precise, humane and meticulously truthful writer, but on the subject of death she becomes essential.’ Zadie Smith

‘Taking the reader to places where they would not otherwise go is one of the things a really good book can do. “The Year of Magical Thinking” does just that, and brilliantly. Powerful, moving and true.’ Spectator

‘A great book, a great work. Angular, exact, pressured and tough, precise as a diamond drill bit.’ Nick Laird

From the Publisher

The cover design is a limited edition print (1 of 2000) by Bob Crowley.

Bob Crowley is an award-winning theatre director, scenic and costume designer. He has worked extensively on Broadway and at The Royal National Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK. He was the designer for the stage adaptation of The Year of Magical Thinking.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002UZ5J8G
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fourth Estate (20 Feb. 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1.2 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 241 pages
  • Customer reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 11,892 ratings

About the author

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Joan Didion
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Joan Didion was born in Sacramento in 1934 and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956. After graduation, Didion moved to New York and began working for Vogue, which led to her career as a journalist and writer. Didion published her first novel, Run River, in 1963. Didion’s other novels include A Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984), and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996).

Didion’s first volume of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, was published in 1968, and her second, The White Album, was published in 1979. Her nonfiction works include Salvador (1983), Miami (1987), After Henry (1992), Political Fictions (2001), Where I Was From (2003), We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live (2006), Blue Nights (2011), South and West (2017) and Let Me Tell You What I Mean (2021). Her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005.

In 2005, Didion was awarded the American Academy of Arts & Letters Gold Medal in Criticism and Belles Letters. In 2007, she was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. A portion of National Book Foundation citation read: "An incisive observer of American politics and culture for more than forty-five years, Didion’s distinctive blend of spare, elegant prose and fierce intelligence has earned her books a place in the canon of American literature as well as the admiration of generations of writers and journalists.” In 2013, she was awarded a National Medal of Arts and Humanities by President Barack Obama, and the PEN Center USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Didion said of her writing: "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” She died in December 2021.

For more information, visit www.joandidion.org

Photo credit: Brigitte Lacombe

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
11,892 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book heartfelt and honest. They describe it as compelling and interesting. Readers find the content insightful, inspiring, and full of life. They find the pacing moving and therapeutic.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

60 customers mention ‘Heartbreaking’51 positive9 negative

Customers find the book heartfelt and honest. They appreciate the author's lucid prose and her ability to convey the story vividly. The book is described as inspiring, deeply personal, and moving. While some readers appreciate the writing style, others find some parts repetitive.

"...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..." Read more

"...The book is well structured and well written." Read more

"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..." Read more

"...The writing is clear, but everyone grieves, she is not special and nor was her grieving...." Read more

46 customers mention ‘Readability’42 positive4 negative

Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They describe it as a treasured read with interesting insights into bereavement.

"...Her prose is exquisite, much like her pain. An astonishing book." Read more

"...year following the death of the author's husband - but I found the book engaging and insightful...." Read more

"...I’ve since recommended it time after time. Quite wonderful." Read more

"...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..." Read more

34 customers mention ‘Thought provoking’34 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful and moving. They describe it as a valuable exploration of life after loss, with an honest portrayal of grief and its raw qualities.

"...death of the author's husband - but I found the book engaging and insightful...." Read more

"...The book is broken up into short chapters which aid reflection and also add to the effect of scenic shifts." Read more

"...Unafraid, connected and able to draw comparisons and thoughts across many subjects...." Read more

"...so it mirrors more my own experience, I found her book moving and full of life." Read more

33 customers mention ‘Pacing’24 positive9 negative

Customers find the book's pacing engaging. They describe it as moving and touching, with poignant insights into grief. Readers find the story honest and well-written, tugging at their heartstrings. The analysis of grief is profound and exhausting, yet also uplifting.

"...The book is broken up into short chapters which aid reflection and also add to the effect of scenic shifts." Read more

"...The book is quietly moving. Another reviewer here has said devastating and they're right." Read more

"...The title draws you in, but it is a very ordinary and sometimes boring book." Read more

"...she is British so it mirrors more my own experience, I found her book moving and full of life." Read more

5 customers mention ‘Hypnosis effectiveness’5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book comforting and therapeutic. They say it's more effective than anti-depressants and soothing to realize that others have experienced loss.

"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..." Read more

"...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..." Read more

"...It was soothing to realise that my own experiences of loss (grief so acute I lose all ability to function) are not singular to me; others experience..." Read more

"Parallels between the author's grief and my own were comforting ...." Read more

5 customers mention ‘Writing style’0 positive5 negative

Customers dislike the writing style. They say it's written in a dispassionate way, like a memoir of grief. The book reads like a diary of self-indulgent intellectualism, and the author comes across as unlikable.

"...of her husband is a bad book, but it is, and she even comes across badly as a person, showing off her contacts and lifestyle...." Read more

"...Much of it is written in a deliberately dispassionate style." Read more

"...However, it reads like a memoir of grief; a diary of self-indulgent intellectualism...." Read more

"...She seems to have zero self-awareness. Strange for a writer." Read more

4 customers mention ‘Length’0 positive4 negative

Customers dislike the book's length. They say it's too long, repetitive, and heavy to read.

"...It's cold. The whole book, it's very remote and detached. It's short, and repetitive, filled with quotes from other people's work on the nature of..." Read more

"...My only criticism would be that sometimes sentences are so long you have to read several times to get the gist." Read more

"This book was way too long.... about 250 pages way too long in fact. I don't quite know what a reader is supposed to surmise from it...." Read more

"Oh what a heavy heavy read! I have had huge bereavement and tragic losses in my own life and found this turgid and uninspiring." Read more

A book about  Bereavement & Loss & How we cope with it.
4 out of 5 stars
A book about Bereavement & Loss & How we cope with it.
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.
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Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 June 2009
    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.
    26 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 April 2012
    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.
    3 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 April 2016
    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.
    3 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 March 2022
    This is an account of what happens to us all, nothing more. Critics maybe blinded by her reputation seem to think it is something special. The writing is clear, but everyone grieves, she is not special and nor was her grieving. The title draws you in, but it is a very ordinary and sometimes boring book.
    4 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 November 2024
    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.
  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 February 2024
    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.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 August 2024
    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.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 May 2015
    If you've experienced the death of someone close to you, I would definitely recommend this book. It will help you to understand what you're going through and have some compassion for your grieving process. I enjoyed aspects of this book but I also found it a little cold and detached.I enjoyed Goscovitch's, The Honey Catchers, more, which depicts a 13 year old's reaction to the sudden death of her father. Maybe because she is British so it mirrors more my own experience, I found her book moving and full of life.
    2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
  • Tita
    5.0 out of 5 stars It's grief in a nutshell!
    Reviewed in Brazil on 20 November 2023
    It's raw, poetic and chaotic. Didion bares her soul candidly about such a harrowing moment in her life, that we can't help but join her in this experience. It's spellbinding. I just couldn't put it down. Highly recommended for all those who have gone through or wish to further understand the grieving process.
  • Adriana Cortes
    5.0 out of 5 stars Una visión lúcida de la muerte y la vida
    Reviewed in Mexico on 18 May 2023
    La narrativa enigmatica de Didion nos invita a lo más íntimo de su relación y de su duelo.
    Llegó un poco maltratado.
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Relatable
    Reviewed in India on 1 February 2025
    It was so good to read this book. I have just lost my husband after a crazy month at the hospital and home. I could so relate to it all....makes me feel I am not alone.
  • Linnie
    5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect
    Reviewed in Saudi Arabia on 2 January 2025
    The book itself is intact and was not scratched whatsoever. And the pages were clean.
  • rcavesta
    5.0 out of 5 stars Precioso relato
    Reviewed in Spain on 17 September 2024
    Un libro muy interesante y una historia preciosa, aunque muy trágica

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