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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magnificent, 3 Jun 2006
From the moment one picks up this poignant memoir one passes into a world slightly softer, slightly muted, and slightly off track from the every day. The very tone of Didion's prose conveys the muffled sensibility she must have been experiencing the entire first year after her beloved husband's sudden death from cardiac failure. It's a magnificent work, done with stellar craftsmanship. Didion manages to explore her grief, and the people and events surrounding it, via methods that are neither whiny nor self-indulgent, but which border on the fantastic and which are ultimately instructive. John surely is beaming at her from his current dimension.
Her introspection is extremely clinical in its self appraisal and criticism. She acknowledges madness, horror, confusion, and every other emotion on the roller-coaster of acute grief. Like many of us, when she experiences a gap in understanding she turns to books, the ultimate givers of wisdom. When these betray her by failing to illuminate, she turns to logic and, finally, to observation.
This Buddhist like observation is mesmerizing. Readers cannot help but relate their own life experiences to Didion's struggle to make sense out of the insensibility of death, and be comforted.
Every physical detail of this book is strategic, and I loved discovering each of these tangible tributes. From the dust cover, lettered in black and blue (red and gold in the UK), with the blue spelling out `John', to the back cover photo with John and Quintana regarding the photographer while Joan focuses her gaze on them, to the author photo on the back flap, depicting a pale elegant woman clearly changed by harsh events, the entire effort is beautifully complete.
I inhaled this book in two settings, and will likely read it again and again, if only to get a sense of companionship and sisterhood through life's travails. There is a reason this book won the National Book Award, and is the talk of every salon. It will endure the ages.
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33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
brilliant, 11 Sep 2006
This small book packs an enormous emotional punch. During the year of the title, not only does Didion have to come to terms with her grief over her husband's sudden death but she has to see her daughter through harrowing - and seemingly unexplainable - medical emergencies, including brain surgery. If this were fiction, you wouldn't believe it. Didion's straightforward and elegant writing gives the reader the space to contemplate their own feelings towards grief and this book will ring true with anyone who has lost anyone close. A truly exceptional book.
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Listening to a Wise Woman, 22 Dec 2006
Joan Didion's gifts lie in her unique ability to analyse what she observes in a personal way without moving into the more flash regions of gonzo journalism. She's an engaging and breezy essayist, intelligent but not an intellectual. Self-aware but not self-indulgent or self-obsessed. She's an excellent writer, observer, and witness of our times.
In this book, she turns her questioning heart and analytic mind to the sudden and unexpected death of her husband and her grieving over his loss while dealing with the grave illness of her daughter. Heavy material, yes, but she writes with courage, style, wit, and both depth and luminosity of heart.
This book is a gift to anyone who has grieved, or who is grieving. Why? Because Grief is such an isolating, isolated place to be -- even with all the support in the world -- and I fully feel that this book is able to actually help a person to feel less alone in the face of loss and death. Joan Didion accomplishes this not by offering us any answers, but by sharing her confusion and pain with us in the only way she knows how -- as a writer. And she shares so fully and generously -- and with such honesty of heart -- that one cannot but be moved and helped along, and made to feel less alone and probably more able to cope with life and death.
Writing and reading can be life-saving experiences. Alice Walker said that, when we write, 'the life we save may be our own'. I get the feeling that Joan Didion, by sharing her story with us, is saving her own life and also may be saving the lives of others as well. The title of Joan Didion's latest collection is 'We Tell Stories in Order to Live'.
I found, after I had read this book, that Joan Didion's daughter died soon after it was written -- the author lost her husband and her daughter in less than two years. Listen to this woman's story: she is humble and she is wise.
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