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The Year of Magical Thinking Paperback – February 13, 2007

by Joan Didion (Author)

925 customer reviews

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From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: 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.

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Product Details

Paperback: 227 pages
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (February 13, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400078431
ISBN-13: 978-1400078431
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (925 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Journalists
- #8 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors
- #58 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Women

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Customer Reviews

925

3.9 out of 5 stars

5 star		50%
4 star		19%
3 star		11%
2 star		10%
1 star		10%

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

A review by Dr. Joseph Suglia

By Joseph Suglia on January 14, 2015

Format: Paperback

A review by Dr. Joseph Suglia

Dedicated to Lux Interior (1948-2009)

What is one to say when the beloved dies? There is nothing to say. None of the platitudes of bereavement, none of the polite formulae seems adequate. He was sitting on that chair, alive, and now he is dead. "John was talking, then he wasn't" (10). What else is there to say? There are no words that could properly express the banality of mortality.

A YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING (2005) is Joan Didion's attempt to craft a language that would make meaningful the death of her husband, John Greg Dunne. It is a language that, at times, seems almost glaciated. After all, she doesn't offer any of the customary responses (simulated tears, screaming, protests of denial, etc.). The social worker who ministers to Didion says of the author: "She's a pretty cool customer" (15).

Didion: "I wondered what an uncool customer would be allowed to do. Break down? Require sedation? Scream?" (16).

Superficial readers, predictably, mistake her seeming sangfroid for indifference. Yet Didion is hardly apathetic. She takes words too seriously to lapse into maudlin kitsch. If she refuses sentimentalism, it is because she knows that the language of sentimentalism isn't precise enough. If she refuses to be emotionally effusive, it is because she knows how easily an access of emotion---however genuine---can deteriorate into cliché. If she avoids hysteria, it is because she knows that abreaction is incommunicative. Her sentences are blissfully free of fossilized phrases, vapid slogans that can never do justice to the workings of grief.

Of course, the opposite reaction would bring about censure, as well.Read more ›

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

Sad and Illuminating

By Judy Croome on November 29, 2012

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

Although I am not a fan of memoirs, I found Didion's memoir of the first year after the loss of her husband both sad and illuminating.

Sad, because, nine months ago, we lost my beloved father. I've had to watch my Mom grieve the end of one of life's grand love affairs - the passionate love affair between my parents, which lasted nearly 60 years.

Illuminating because, at times, Didion expresses her personal grieving in such a universal way that her loss became my Mother's loss. Didion gave a voice to the process of grief that my Mom, a widow, is experiencing and which I, a still-married daughter, have not yet experienced.

That Dunne brought deep meaning into Didion's life is unquestionable; her struggle to control or somehow change the events of that year, at times, makes fascinating reading because one senses that her emotions, her sens of loss are deep so that if she touched on them, she probably wouldn't cope.

But, while reading, I was struck by another level of sadness: at the hospital, which declared her husband dead, the social worker said of Didion's reaction, "It's okay; she's a pretty cool customer."

I constantly found myself asking, where ARE her emotions? What IS she feeling?

She could, and did, articulate the practical details of her year of grieving in microscopic detail, but there were times when I found her determined and strong-willed focus on medical facts, and the logistics of Dunne's death and her daughter's illness, disconcerting. Understandable, yes, and sad because it suggested a desperate attempt at mastering her overwhelming loss, but still disconcerting. She is, as the social worker said, "a pretty cool customer," and she manages to keep her deepest emotions very private.Read more ›

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701 of 731 people found the following review helpful

Deserves to become a classic memoir about grief and loss

By Kcorn TOP 500 REVIEWER on October 6, 2005

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

I stayed up almost all might just to finish reading it, unable to put this down, although I confess I had to keep a box of tissues nearby. I've lost 5 people in the last few years and, just recently, another friend and so I related very strongly to this book.

Didion's unflinching account of the sudden loss of her husband (which occurred while their only child was in a coma in a hospital (!)) deserves to be a classic in the genre of books written by and for those who are grieving. It is hard to find books like this, which are both honest but not overly sentimental, not resorting to the tropes which seem to surround death. She doesn't offer vague platitudes or advice. She simply relates her very personal experience, including the inevitable vulnerability, unexpected moments of being blindsided by memories and sudden tears, etc.

She covers all the bases, including the kind of insanity that can seize one in the throes of grief, those moments when you forget the person is actually dead, when you turn to speak to him or her as you normally would at a certain part of the day or reach for the phone to share the latest news.

The book is raw. If you're looking for religous or spiritual guidance and inspiration, this is not the book for you. As Didion herself noted, writing about the book recently, it was intentionally written "raw". I assume she didn't want to wait, to distance herself from the intensity of the experience as she wrote it down, quite unlike many other books she has written. Raw or not, it wasn't sloppy, overly sentimental or complete despairing.Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Five Stars

Excellent reading on the topic of grief.

Published 1 day ago by Steve Hobson

Magical Book

It is very hard for me to write a review on this book and do it justice. Joan Didion is an incredible writer. She writes eloquently, beautifully, and smart. Read more

Published 3 days ago by Amazon Customer

Three Stars

It has fallen, half read, behind my bed and I haven't mustered up sufficient energy to retrieve it.

Published 7 days ago by Fayeski

Great love, great grief.

Described my experience with death of my partner precisely. Comforting to know that the pain and mental confusion are universal, part of being human

Published 8 days ago by Rosemarie F. Lynn

Hard to find the Magical Thinking

Possibly I don’t recognize magical thinking when I read it. Was the magical thinking that she took a year to realize her husband wasn’t coming back? Read more

Published 9 days ago by Dottie Randazzo

Five Stars

Good reading

Published 10 days ago by Luba Stenchever

Beautifully written book on a difficult subject

I have read this book may times and it never gets old. She writes what kind of crazy every widow goes through, especially those whose husbands die suddenly, without warning. Read more

Published 15 days ago by Rosie Jaybee

... not think this would be the book one would enjoy reading as one...

I do not think this would be the book one would enjoy reading as one reviewer mentioned for a book club. Grief is not written about enough. Read more

Published 18 days ago by Christine A. Droney

Four Stars

Written from the heart, soulful, impossible to put down!

Published 19 days ago by hilda r. mendez

Five Stars

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Published 22 days ago by Meriel Christensen

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