The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion
Didion's account of the year after her husband died at the dinner table while their daughter lay in a coma: the magical thinking that he might return, the research into grief, the precise observation of her own derangement. It is a masterpiece of controlled prose about uncontrolled loss.
Read it if…
you want the great literary account of grief, cool on the surface and devastating beneath.
Skip it if…
you want warmth; Didion is exact, not warm.
Three things you will actually use
- Grief derranges the rational; expect it.
- Observation is a way of surviving.
- Life changes in the instant; the ordinary instant.
Do this first
Notice your own magical thinking, the shoes kept, the number not deleted, and let it be.
Our verdict
A masterpiece.
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