isakr's review against another edition
3.5
Graphic: Medical content, Terminal illness, Injury/Injury detail, and Grief
Moderate: Cancer and Classism
Minor: Forced institutionalization, Murder, Classism, Chronic illness, Alcoholism, and Alcohol
ajreffsin's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Medical content, Death, Grief, Child death, and Terminal illness
olivefoil's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Child death
Moderate: Terminal illness and Chronic illness
katiehuntington's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Grief, Death, Medical content, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Mental illness
Minor: Blood and Suicidal thoughts
bethw's review against another edition
3.0
Graphic: Death, Grief, and Terminal illness
flara's review against another edition
4.0
Blue Nights read like poetry. It went back and forth, from present to past, memories to present day observations, the real and the imagined. Didion questions small details and missed premonitions, analyses them, reminisces about them. What if one small circumstance was different, how would it affect the events that followed? Would it cancel the outcome altogether? Blue Nights is a heartbreaking anthology of Didion's life; the story of loneliness, outliving people, being the one left behind. Ageing and frailty, later of which she refuses to accept. All of this in a juxtaposition with memories of Quintana's childhood, snippets of her writing and her thinking. We see Quintana through the lens of a guilt-ridden mother, guilty of outliving her, and supposedly of failing to see the early signs of her struggle. She relives them again and again, repeats short phrases and quotes in an effort to uncover previously unseen, but no such thing is happening.
This book heavily references popular culture of the 1960-80s America. I have neither been alive during this time frame, nor have I ever been to America. The Year of Magical Thinking was full of these references as well, which was confusing me. I especially struggled to understand the significance of excerpts from Didion's previous works, simply because I was not familiar with them. In Blue nights however, I didn't mind this at all. These references did not prevent me from understanding and enjoying the writing. On the contrary, I was pointed at direction of other talented writers/creatives, whose work I would like to discover. I relished in reading the book, in keeping both Quintana and John alive, just like Didion intended it to be. I had tears in my eyes every 20 pages or so. Not exactly sad tears, and definitely not happy ones. They were more like tears of understanding and mutual compassion. Certain points would hit home, because I had been contemplating my own tragedy in identical ways.
Graphic: Death, Injury/Injury detail, Terminal illness, and Medical trauma
Minor: Alcohol, Abortion, and Pregnancy