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evilbag's review against another edition
4.0
"i believed that days would be too full forever, too crowded with friends there was no time to see. i believed, by way of contemplating the future, that we would all be around for one another's funerals. i was wrong. i had failed to imagine, i had not understood. here was the way it was going to be: i would be around for henry's funeral, but he was not going to be around for mine"
thelostwayne's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.25
I love Joan Didion. She could write the phone book and I’d read it.
zellm's review against another edition
3.0
Although Didion's prose is always a delight to read, descriptively speaking, these stories were just not often on topics that interested me. The focus on criminal cases piqued my interest, but the middle of the book was generally a little boring, and lacked Didion's narrative voice, which was disappointing.
charlottesalusinszky's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
2.0
This is probably not the best introduction to Joan Didion’s work, and is hard to relate to if aren’t already familiar with or interested in the contexts of the essays.
nathansnook's review against another edition
medium-paced
3.5
A fine collection of stories. What is there to do after the death of your husband but to look at where you come from? Spanning across Los Angeles and New York, Didion could write about the most mundane subject and I'd eat it up as if I was starved. She discussed currency exchange and I was floored by the music she incorporated into her language around numbers and symbols.
You really get a sense of where LA came from. You really get a sense of what New York was like. All in the late eighties. Money moved. People rioted. Over jobs. Over skin color. These essays show us that not much has changed from the America we know now. The spirit is still there. That trying and true longing that feeds the soil with the running blood of work ethic and politics that run cities dry of a light that beckons and beams in that hope that heaven projects.
You really get a sense of where LA came from. You really get a sense of what New York was like. All in the late eighties. Money moved. People rioted. Over jobs. Over skin color. These essays show us that not much has changed from the America we know now. The spirit is still there. That trying and true longing that feeds the soil with the running blood of work ethic and politics that run cities dry of a light that beckons and beams in that hope that heaven projects.