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hollyrebecca's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
- Such a poignant and impactful exploration into the effects of loss and grief and trauma.
- Joan has found such a perfect method of depicting the ways in which the mind battles with the death of a loved one. The lack of coherency through much of the telling, due to Joan constantly slipping into tangential tales and getting stuck on disjointed memories, is so reflective of the way your brain tries to protect itself by latching on to images and feelings of a time before such grief encompassed your being.
- I have never understood my own thoughts and feelings, about the past loss of my family members, to such a degree as I have after reading this. A truly necessary read for all.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, and Death
Minor: Suicide and Murder
clarabooksit's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
2.25
I’ve been really into reading books on grief and loss, especially memoirs, and the number one recommended book on all the lists is THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by Joan Didion. So, I finally read it.
It wasn’t for me.
To be fair, I was avoiding it less because of its popularity but because I don’t like Didion’s perspective. I haven’t read any of her fiction but I’ve read a lot of her cultural criticism essays on literature and film, and I’ve always found her elitist and out-of-touch. This book wasn’t the exception.
While I respect her intellect and her writing is undeniably smart, her complete lack of awareness, let alone acknowledgement, of her overwhelming privilege—white, wealthy, tastemaker for the cultural elite—is grating, frustrating and sometimes offensive. Even in a book about the year following the sudden and tragic death of her husband, she can’t help but name drop and throw around her wealthy lifestyle, never once reflecting on her privilege. It makes her very difficult to relate to.
I wanted to like this book. The way it’s written brilliantly reflects the way grief alters the way we think and how memory can fail us. There were moments that hit me in the gut with their poignancy. And it feels unfair to judge how someone expresses their grief, but overall this didn’t work for me.
Memoirs I’d recommend instead: A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung, Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey, and Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zauner.
It wasn’t for me.
To be fair, I was avoiding it less because of its popularity but because I don’t like Didion’s perspective. I haven’t read any of her fiction but I’ve read a lot of her cultural criticism essays on literature and film, and I’ve always found her elitist and out-of-touch. This book wasn’t the exception.
While I respect her intellect and her writing is undeniably smart, her complete lack of awareness, let alone acknowledgement, of her overwhelming privilege—white, wealthy, tastemaker for the cultural elite—is grating, frustrating and sometimes offensive. Even in a book about the year following the sudden and tragic death of her husband, she can’t help but name drop and throw around her wealthy lifestyle, never once reflecting on her privilege. It makes her very difficult to relate to.
I wanted to like this book. The way it’s written brilliantly reflects the way grief alters the way we think and how memory can fail us. There were moments that hit me in the gut with their poignancy. And it feels unfair to judge how someone expresses their grief, but overall this didn’t work for me.
Memoirs I’d recommend instead: A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung, Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey, and Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zauner.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Medical trauma, Death, and Grief
Moderate: Murder
Minor: Suicide
dudette's review against another edition
emotional
informative
sad
fast-paced
3.0
Not exactly what I imagined. Half of the book is about her daughter's illness which is tragic and I understand that it all happened in the "year of magical thinking" but I was more interested in the mourning process. The other half about marriage and life was more powerful and I wished for more of it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Grief, Medical content, Death, and Chronic illness
Minor: Murder and Suicide
sammantha's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, Death of parent, Blood, and Medical content
Minor: Suicide, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Abortion, Murder, War, and Drug use
amelreads's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Death, and Medical content
Moderate: Death of parent
Minor: Murder
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