Reviews with content warning for Grief - L'anno del pensiero magico

The title really does not capture what this book is about, nor somehow does the synopsis? I went into it expecting to glean something from the grief in the year following Didion's husband's death and her daughter's hospitalization and instead mainly just learned about these two events. While there are thoughts and reflections on the nuance of grief there is no "magical thinking" as the title might lead you to believe. It's perhaps a reference to the cognitive dissonance grief puts you in that Didion highlights her own experience with, but this I wouldn't term magical. Having experienced more loss and grief in my life in this past year than I ever have (or ever want to again) I was just expecting more. It didn't tell me any more than what I already knew or provide any hindsight. It just was, which is fine, but I feel shortchanged by how the book was pitched

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zoinkie's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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isscnls's review against another edition

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It's kind of interesting, and a little disarming, to read someone with such a rational, straightforward mind talk about the experience of grieving, which is an absolutely irrational, complicated thing. I think that makes it more heartbreaking, the making sense of things that cannot be in any way made sense of. This realization only came of course because I read one other Didion work before this. The contrast between that previous book and this one is unapparent in terms of language, style, wording — but, to use the word again, disarming in terms of the surety one exudes and one doesn't.

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