The Year of Magical Thinking
A Year of Magical Thinking is a meditation on grief. Faced with the sudden loss of her husband and the uncertain health of her daughter, Joan Didion tries to hold the pieces of her world together. The book offers a voyeuristic glimpse into an upper-class introvert’s ideal life—Didion and her husband, also a well-known author, had built an insulated existence that, apropos of nothing, ended. Full of anecdotes and disarming vulnerability, the reader can’t help but participate in Didion’s loss.