Book 28

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
2006: Knopf
227 pages
Recommended by Lara Evangelista
Began: 10 May 2006
Finished: 15 May 2006

There is Joan Didion with her severe looks and California glam and there is her older now. Both of these versions of her are shown on the dust jacket that wraps around the devastatingly gorgeous writing inside. What moved me, more than the shock and grieving, was the love affair of Didion and Dunne and their nearly forty years of marriage. For all the beauty of this book, the elegance of the writing on death and loss, a complete love story is told of a marriage imperfectly perfect and whole. There is family and a world where being alive is connecting with others and life is about the people who inhabit the world with us. Didion in her looks, her persona, her writing, always seemed stark to me before but this is rich and giving to the reader, so personal without being exclusive, raw without being a mess. Even the cover shows a quiet way of remembering with John's name illuminated in blue.

Quote: "Time is the school in which we learn."  ¶ 10:05