A review by wellfedpages
Blue Nights by Joan Didion

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced
‘Let me just be in the ground and go to sleep'
- Quintana

What to say about a book that leaves you torn to shreds

I did not cry while reading this book

But crying is not the only sign of sadness, or feeling anything deeply

Crying is an outlet for something that splinters much deeper

It's wonderful if you can

But not everyone can. Or does. Or wants to

A friend once told me I should cry more

As if crying was like turning on a tap

When you have calcified into a certain person, you don't turn into someone else overnight

That is if you change at all

Which is only if you want to, or life shapes you to

I wonder if she would suggest that to a man

Perhaps not

Men don't cry. That is the natural order of things. Even if you do try to chip away at toxic masculinity

Women not crying is unnatural, cold, psychopathic

Because god forbid a woman shows a strong façade or keeps her grief private

Perhaps then I am a man

The only logical explanation for being the way I am, because last I checked I am not a psychopath

But what has that got to do with this book you ask?

Well it's a melancholy meditation on mortality, motherhood, memory and the middling circumstances we call life

And yes it's heart-breaking

Though each heart breaks differently

So let's not compare our shattered pieces

'When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children'

I don't have children, but her pain pierced through my cold little heart
Adoption, fear of abandonment, search for identity, the crippling fear of failing as a mother and ageing alone are things that she gently draws out from her boxes of memories and lays out for us in a new light

It also brought up personal feelings related to illness & hospitalization

How to faint on your bedroom floor and wake up in a pool of blood

How to insert cameras into your body

How to get afraid of getting up from a chair 

to name a few

I also felt seen by certain passages in a way I rarely have

'I was short, I was thin, I could circle my wrists with my thumb and index finger. My earliest memories involve being urged by my mother to gain weight, as if my failure to do so were willful, an act of rebellion

'I ask what caused this neuritis, this neuropathy, this neurological inflammation.
Not weighing enough, he answers.
It does not escape me that the consensus on what is wrong with me has once again insinuated the ball in my court.
…
I drink the protein shakes.
I eat the freshly laid eggs from the farm in New Jersey and the perfect vanilla ice cream from Maison du Chocolat on Madison Avenue.
Nonetheless.
I do not gain weight.'

Didion's life dug deep into mine
Just like the opening lines by Quintana

Her passing away was sadly perhaps the petfect time to read this book
It's not just about losing a child, but a quest to know whether she knew that child at all, whether any of us can ever truly know another person, even if we know them intimately, even if we raise them.

We can keep trying to run through life, but as Didion reminds us -

'By that evening when the play closed it seemed clear that I had in fact maintained momentum, but it also seemed clear that maintaining momentum came at a certain cost...One phrase that came to mind that night was "pushing yourself". Another was "beyond endurance".'

So the question is, how far will you keep pushing?
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