by Joan Didion
"You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."
This is something I fear sub-consciously. That split second moment that comes at the most unexpected time, turning everything upside down. And worse, what happens after that moment has passed.
Joan Didion's memoir, "The Year of Magical Thinking," is a deeply intimate account of her life after the sudden loss of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, while her daughter Quintana was already in the hospital for a bad case of pneumonia that turned into septic shock.
After visiting their daughter in the ICU, Didion and her husband come home, making plans and contemplating their daughter's health condition. Mid-sentence in conversation, Dunne has a fatal heart attack. Her life is changed forever.
This memoir is not about death, but what happens after to those who are still alive. Such a universal experience is still so mystifying in so many ways. She describes with great honesty her grieving process, the thoughts that occupy her head, the ways in which she tries to come to terms with death and remain sane.
Her language is so lucid and her sentences so chiseled that the impact of what she says comes across strongly. She goes through the events over and over, in her writing, as she would have in her mind. This repetition gives the reader a real feeling of her actual experience, her inner voice, and the way the mind works when it is dealing with tragedy.
Despite how it may seem, this book is not depressing. It is real, un-ornamented, straight, at times even witty. As a writer, Didion has chosen her strongest skill to help her mourn, and it is a powerful way of communicating and relating to all the others who feel alone when enduring personal loss.
