I bought Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking right away, a couple of days after it was released. No waiting for the paperback, no waiting for reviews that might or might not entice me to read it because I knew I would read it anyway. As did hordes of other admirers, as well as new Didion readers drawn to the compelling understatement and power of this little book.
Didion is a giant on the literary scene and an American journalistic icon. She writes infrequently on a personal level though, so I expected this book to be special - and emotionally devastating. I have always been a little awestruck by the strength and depth of Didion's writing, as well as her thinking, and this deceptively simple book certainly does not disappoint. The Year of Magical Thinking is not so much a book as it is a long and wrenching personal essay. It has a simple and single-minded focus. It is about grief and coping and the basic mechanics of loss.
A sparse and powerful memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking recounts the 365 days following the death of Didion's husband, John Gregory Dunn, just after Christmas in 2003. Didion and Dunn, also an author, were just short of their 40th anniversary when their daughter Quintana, newly married and their only child, fell seriously ill on Christmas morning with a bad case of the flu that, in Didion's words, "exploded into pneumonia and septic shock". As Quintana lay unconscious in the intensive care unit, her parents struggled with trauma and worry as any parents would. Then, five days later, on December 30, the story as Didion tells it here, began.
The Year of Magical Thinking starts with these words, and they are repeated, mantra-like, throughout the book:
Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
And that is the soul of this book. As they sat down to dinner that evening, John suffered a massive coronary and died. Life, as Joan Didion knew it, ended.
Didion tells this story simply, never lapsing into sentimentality. She seems to be stepping back, observing herself as she tries to keep going, and lets the journalist in her come up with the words to describe her journey. She recounts very matter-of-factly the mental processes she suffered through, the grief that consumed her days, and her quiet forays into a gentle madness. She expected some magical transformation, some cosmic disavowal of what had happened. She expected John to come back. At some very basic level, she believed he would. She hung on to all of his shoes because he would need them when he returned. Outwardly, she behaved normally, as normally as a traumatized mother and grieving widow can behave, but, in her mind, reality became a bit distorted. She lost herself in her magical thinking.
Focusing on Quintana, Didion immersed herself in the minute details and complex pathology of her daughter's illness. Quintana finally improved, came home, fell drastically ill again, hovered near death again, recovered again, and began a long program of physical therapy. Throughout the ordeal, Didion functioned and coped and, all the while, hovered quietly on the brink of a grief-induced madness.
Didion says now, and has said before, that she does not know how she feels about anything until she writes about it. And this book has that feel to it. Everything you ever thought you knew about grief and loss is somehow there in her spare and simple words. The cathartic effect is easy to see. But much is also beneath the surface. Didion is so controlled in the painting of her grief that it somehow draws the reader into her anguish in a very raw way. The result is a compelling narrative that will leave you shaken.
Epilogue
The Year of Magical Thinking takes on an added and heartbreaking dimension when you know the unwritten epilogue. In August, 2005, several weeks after Didion submitted the manuscript for publication, Quintana fell ill once more and died. Didion decided against updating or altering the book and it was published without change. "It's finished," Didion said.
The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2005.
