One reason I love Joan Didion is because of her way of writing that is truly authentic to the human condition and emotions. The Year of Magical Thinking is her recount of the year after her husband’s sudden death and the journey of emotional trials she went through in order to feel like herself again as well as the voyage of grief regarding the stages of death and heartache.
Her story begins with her daughter’s hospitalization due to neurological issues as well as a few other medical conditions. While her daughter was hospitalized, A few days after her daughter’s hospitalization, Didion’s husband, John, collapsed while at home preparing for a late supper with Didion. As the ambulance arrived, there was really nothing that could have been done to save her husband and he unfortunately passed away. As the days pass, Didion recounts the way she felt numb and as if she could not process the situation at hand, and to outsiders she may have actually seemed to be okay. The main takeaway from the book is Didion’s journey through the stages of grief and how she began to cope with losing her husband and a sick daughter.
Didion managed to keep a book of notes, detailing the period of which her daughter began experiencing medical issues in late December of 2004. The notes that she kept, though she did not know at the time, would soon become a part of this novel, as well as the novel, Blue Nights, soon to come after her daughter’s death in 2005.
She begins with how she initially felt the days after her husband’s passing, the denial. She goes into great detail about her ‘magical thinking’ and how she only feels as if he’s gone on a trip. The fact that her husband has passed has not dawned on her yet.
The novel starts off slow with Didion losing her husband and soon her daughter as well, but as she writes about these accounts of her personal life, she manages to open herself up to her reader in the process. Reading this novel was almost as if I were reading someone’s journal, their personal thoughts and tribulations after a loved one’s death that should only be kept personal. But, the book becomes thicker with more emotion and ponders certain questions that someone might ask after experiencing a great amount of grief.
A Year after her husband’s passing, Didion still finds herself questioning accounts of the night he passed. For instance, she goes far enough to question his actions before he died. When John was writing one of his books, he made a comment to Joan that stuck with her until after his death. Which was something along the lines of “I don’t know why I am working on this, I won’t finish it anyway” which causes Joan to question whether or not his death may have been preventable in the first place. Even a year after John’s death, she finds herself still in denial and pondering events as if she can go back in time and change them.
This novel was one of the better ‘real-life’ experience novels that I have read in awhile, considering this is a real account of Didion’s personal life and emotions processing the death of a loved one. There are not too many authentic personal accounts of grief that I have read, but this one is at the top of my list.