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A review by bookgirllife
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.25
To say this book was moving and powerful is an understatement. Joan Didion processes her grief in a brutally human way through the course of The Year of Magical Thinking. I had this one on my TBR for quite a while. After many recommendations, all I can say is that it was worth the hype. Didion deconstructs her grief following the death of her husband many times over in order to process the ways in which she struggled to process. The Year of Magical Thinking forced me to deconstruct everything I believed about loss and our natural responses to it, or the lack thereof.
I had heard many wonderful things about Didion’s writing prior to reading this book, but none of it prepared me for the very physical experience of reading this book. Didion writes from a deeply intimate and transparent perspective, even as she explores the medical and psychological side of grief. In The Year of Magical Thinking Didion ruminates on her loss as she tries to come to terms with it. The way she does this is not linear, is not through a five (or seven) step process. “Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life” as Didion wrote in this book, and that is exactly how she writes about it. Those waves are felt through her writing, with a slow rise as she endevours to understand grief, the suddenness of feeling the loss in startlingly ordinary moments, the regression into her “magical thinking.”
While grief is an overarching, sometimes all-consuming, sometimes entirely (and intentionally) neglected, theme in The Year of Magical Thinking, motherhood was another strong theme. In particular, mothering through grief while her child was chronically ill. Didion portrays the challenges of continuation without her husband with great vulnerability. It made me think about how my mother would say, following the death of her parents, how she could only go on because she had her children to take care of. It made me think of the necessity for distraction in order to move forward.
I was struck by her insights into the act of grieving viewed as self-pity and the loneliness of grief. She also wrote on the subject of feelings of betrayal and guilt of bereavement, and also on the meaninglessness of death. We try to find some solace in meaning, in things happen for a reason. It is difficult to reconcile that sometimes, there is no reason. It's just what happened. It didn't serve any greater purpose and you're left trying to make peace with that while making peace with your loss.
I found The Year of Magical Thinking to be very interesting, which feels weird to say about someone else’s grief. Didion wrote this book because it's what she had to do to process her grief, to mourn her husband. I am eager to read more Joan Didion in the future after this as an introduction to her work.
I had heard many wonderful things about Didion’s writing prior to reading this book, but none of it prepared me for the very physical experience of reading this book. Didion writes from a deeply intimate and transparent perspective, even as she explores the medical and psychological side of grief. In The Year of Magical Thinking Didion ruminates on her loss as she tries to come to terms with it. The way she does this is not linear, is not through a five (or seven) step process. “Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life” as Didion wrote in this book, and that is exactly how she writes about it. Those waves are felt through her writing, with a slow rise as she endevours to understand grief, the suddenness of feeling the loss in startlingly ordinary moments, the regression into her “magical thinking.”
While grief is an overarching, sometimes all-consuming, sometimes entirely (and intentionally) neglected, theme in The Year of Magical Thinking, motherhood was another strong theme. In particular, mothering through grief while her child was chronically ill. Didion portrays the challenges of continuation without her husband with great vulnerability. It made me think about how my mother would say, following the death of her parents, how she could only go on because she had her children to take care of. It made me think of the necessity for distraction in order to move forward.
I was struck by her insights into the act of grieving viewed as self-pity and the loneliness of grief. She also wrote on the subject of feelings of betrayal and guilt of bereavement, and also on the meaninglessness of death. We try to find some solace in meaning, in things happen for a reason. It is difficult to reconcile that sometimes, there is no reason. It's just what happened. It didn't serve any greater purpose and you're left trying to make peace with that while making peace with your loss.
I found The Year of Magical Thinking to be very interesting, which feels weird to say about someone else’s grief. Didion wrote this book because it's what she had to do to process her grief, to mourn her husband. I am eager to read more Joan Didion in the future after this as an introduction to her work.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief
Moderate: Chronic illness and Death