Book review of Joan Didion’s ‘The year of magical thinking’

This memoir focuses on a year of Joan Didion’s life in which she is grieving for the loss of her husband and at the same time experiencing great distress as her daughter is critically ill in hospital. The title of the book, ‘The year of magical thinking’ refers to her belief that her husband will return. She expresses this conviction several times in the memoir and even keeps his shoes because she thinks he will need them for when he reappears. It is very rare that authors write about bereavement and grief to this extent. These emotions are often kept private and can sometimes be embarrassing or too difficult to discuss with others.

Initially this memoir evokes an emotional response and the reader may feel that they can relate to Didion’s shock and disbelief when her husband is suddenly taken from her and writing this was probably a cathartic experience, helping her to come to terms with her pain and to accept that he has gone. As the memoir progresses however, Didion goes over and over the same events which may be necessary for her but is not so interesting for the reader. In addition to this she introduces a lot of incomprehensible medical jargon in an attempt to understand exactly what caused her husbands death. It may be concluded that although this is a brave book to write, it fails to hold the reader’s interest.