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The Year Of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion


8.4

based on 24 reviews
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based on 15 votes
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The writer describes her experiences during the year that saw the sudden death of her husband (fellow author John Gregory Dunne) and the prolonged, severe illness of their daughter (who died after the completion of the book).

Knopf, 240 pages
10/04/2005
$23.95

ISBN: 140004314X

Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs

NOTES:
Winner of the 2005 National Book Award (Nonfiction).

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

LA Weekly Claire Messud

Didion's observations are not new; but particular, and true, they are searing. They will explain much to those who have not suffered, and will articulate the grief of those who have.

Los Angeles Times Gideon Lewis-Kraus

[Didion's] admissions are severe and often excruciating. They also are as instructive, resonant and searing as her 40 years of sympathetic stories about how we deny our trouble discerning illusion from reality, how we pretend that things aren't falling apart. [2 Oct 2005]

New York Review Of Books John Leonard

I can't think of a book we need more than [Didion's] those of us for whom this life is it, these moments all the more precious because they are numbered.

Publishers Weekly

An indispensable addition to Didion's body of work and a lyrical, disciplined entry in the annals of mourning literature. [27 Jun 2005, p. 48]

The New York Times Michiko Kakutani

An utterly shattering book that gives the reader an indelible portrait of loss and grief and sorrow, all chronicled in minute detail with the author's unwavering, reportorial eye.

The New York Times Book Review Robert Pinsky

Didion's book is thrilling and engaging--sometimes quite funny--because it ventures to tell the truth.

Chicago Sun-Times Stephen J. Lyons

An unforgettable lament that is both personal and universal. [Didion] has given the reader an eloquent starting point in which to navigate through the wilderness of grief.

Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese

[Didion] has never been more forthcoming or affecting than she is here, offering grief-drenched flashbacks to a vital and contentious 40-year marriage. [7 Oct 2005, p. 80]

Christian Science Monitor Marjorie Kehie

If Didion's narrative sounds heartrending, it is--utterly so. But at the same time, it is a work of much majesty.

Salon Andrew O'Hehir

This chronicle of genuine grief and madness, this loving tribute to her real family, is also Didion's crowning literary achievement.

Slate Peter D. Kramer

The book is, as promised, extraordinary. The Year of Magical Thinking is raw, brutal, compact, precise, immediate, literate, and, given the subject matter, astonishingly readable.

San Francisco Chronicle Oscar Villalon

This work of what could be called "personal journalism" is as bracing an account of private disaster as any in years

Daily Telegraph Alex Clark

[A] luminously shocking memoir of bereavement .

Daily Telegraph Patrick Skene Catling

Clear and controlled, [Didion's] book seems at first to combine the cool styles of autopsy and psychoanalysis, but the underlying, gut-wrenching emotion soon becomes apparent.

Chicago Tribune Conan Putnam

[A] remarkable memoir. [20 Nov 2005]

London Review Of Books Michael Wood

Nothing is more moving in The Year of Magical Thinking than Didion’s austere management of her sorrow, her worry about self-pity, a form of thinking more disordered, we may feel, than any of her transparent fantasies of return and reversal.

Houston Chronicle John Freeman

Stylistically, this is not Didion's most beautiful writing--it is too circumscribed to be that. But it is her most awesome performance of both participating in an event and watching it.

The New Yorker

This book is about getting a grip and getting on; it's also a tribute to an extraordinary marriage.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

The keening voice is as morbidly seductive and passively theatrical as ever: the poet of existential nausea, the sufferer of migraines, the compulsive weeper hiding her tears behind outsize sunglasses.

Washington Post Jonathan Yardley

The Year of Magical Thinking, though it spares nothing in describing Didion's confusion, grief and derangement, is a work of surpassing clarity and honesty.

Boston Globe Drew Limsky

In the matter-of-fact, almost comma-less prose that is her hallmark, Didion illuminates the bond between husband and wife in terms both homely and indelible.

New York Observer Adam Begley

The splintered reveries are too scattered in time and place, both too thin and too crowded--sprinkled with names that may mean something to us in other contexts but add nothing here ... I'd like to read about Ms. Didion's marriage, but I'd like her to write about it as a reporter, not as a mourner.

Kirkus Reviews

A potent depiction of grief, but also a book lacking the originality and acerbic prose that distinguished Didion's earlier writing. [15 Jul 2005, p. 774]

The Guardian Veronica Horwell

[Didion's] admitted new vulnerability and bewilderment do not square with her continued intense discipline of every comma.

The average user rating for this book is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

John V gave it a10:
She's not dropping names. Those are the people in her life. Great book!

stuart s gave it a5:
uhm i dont see waht all the fuss is about there are parts that are interesting but she constantly drops names and i could barely finish it due to that fact

lloyd r gave it a9:
painful recollections shared about the never never land.

Robert L gave it an8:
It's everything that those who have praised it say it is. But GOD she drops names.

carrie w gave it a10:
I absolutely love this book, it's one that you can't pull away from. Since I have never been around a person in mourning and am lucky anough to have never suffered a loss myself, it was very touching and intersting to learn of every detail that accompanies a loss. Great book.

megan B gave it a10:
I couldn't put it down! I lost my mother when I was 12 which confused me and made me weak. Joan Didion whats about what I also went through and I finally truly know, that I am not alone. The book was beautifully crafted and brutaly honest. I reccomend it to everyone if you have been touched by dealths sting or not.

Chris gave it a10:
I was given the book by "our" best friends, JIm & Barb. I lost my best friend & husband Frank on 5/17/05. I found Joan Didion verbalised feelings that I have been afraid to talk about because I was fearful that people would think I had lost my mind. Thank you for sharing your pain with all of us!

The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

The Year Of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion