Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

37 reviews

daralexandria's review against another edition

emotional relaxing sad fast-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Grief, Medical trauma, Death, and Medical content

bparkinson31's review against another edition

emotional reflective

5.0

Oh, wow. Just gutted. Simply beautiful and horrible, the way that painful loved lost is. 

The audiobook narration by Barbara Caruso was particularly well done. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma

Moderate: Death and Death of parent

madamenovelist's review

dark emotional funny sad tense medium-paced

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Pandemic/Epidemic and Alcohol

crawforl's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Medical content, Death, and Death of parent

ieotter13's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

3.25

did i accidentally read the play version? yes. was it still good? also yes. 

a pretty poetic book about going crazy as a result of intense grief. 

i did have fun imagining how i’d stage this as a play tho so worth it ig?

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Medical trauma, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Terminal illness, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Mental illness, Medical content, Chronic illness, Child death, and Grief

lesenilpferd's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Medical content, and Medical trauma

nadijya's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Medical trauma, Death, Grief, and Panic attacks/disorders

wheelyautistic's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful sad fast-paced

5.0

I loved how I was practically in the mind of the author. Although it seems like it's a little all of over the place and hard to keep track of in reality this perfectly depict the author's mind and thought through the toughest time in her life.

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Grief, Medical content, Chronic illness, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, and Medical trauma

breegoux's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

2.5

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

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, and Medical trauma

isscnls's review against another edition

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.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Terminal illness, Death, Blood, Medical content, and Grief