by Joan Didion
[Non-fiction] My reading of this book follows right on the tails of 'The Year Of Magical Thinking' by the same author, in which her husband dies suddenly from a massive coronary. In that book, their daughter was hospitalized and in a coma from a severe infection. In this book, her daughter's poor he...
I wonder why I couldn't like it as much as The Year if Magical Thinking. As far as I remember the style is similar, but honestly Blue Night feels like a long & endless rambling & rantung on getting old & losing her child. I had a feeling that she's flabbergasted that all priviledged life didn't shie...
This is my first Didion. I came across her name while reading "The End of Life Book Club" and she got stuck onto my to-read pile. I didn't overly enjoy this book (who could?), but I can appreciate it for it's realism and honesty and poetic value.The text was very repetitive. Part of this is becau...
The book is only partly about losing her daughter, it is just as much about losing your sense of yourself, the body you trusted, the sharp mind, the memories, the anchor in life. At 75 Joan Didion face a lot of health problems and the moment that really touched me was her trying to figure out who to...
In BLUE NIGHTS Joan Didion writes about the aftermath of her adopted daughter's (Quintana Roo) death. This is as honest, probing and unflinching as only Didion gets. She asks herself the eternal question: 'Did I do the best I could for my daughter, was my love for her good enough?' These are the kin...
Another moving and heartbreakingly insightful memoir from Joan Didion, this time centered on aging, illusion, adoption delimmas and the tragic, unexpected death of her daughter.
While The Year of Magical Thinking was easy to become absorbed in, and was an excellent evocation of grief, Blue Nights is a better-structured book. In part, this is because Didion is always so meticulous about language and the sequencing of scenes. Here, that very carefulness is subject to scrutiny...
The second half of Joan Didion's grief memoirs--powerful, intellectual, and more human than some of her previous work.
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