A review by ckfoster
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

3.0

Didion has a way of digesting the specific feelings of grief and finding the words to describe it. There were ways she reflected on her husband’s death that had never crossed my mind. There were others that validated that I’m not alone in my thoughts. She take about living the first year after John’s death through last year’s calendar. I know I have thought about milestone days in a similar way. The day mom told me she found a lump. Mom’s birthday that she spent with me celebrating my baby shower. Didion even talks about our obsession with preventing death and reflecting back on an inability to do so as a personal failure. Boy do I feel that too. Her ability to connect with readers (re: me) through a time of grief and to come out the other side with a more mature reflection is a source of hope. It will always be dark but the living have so much more living they need to do.