Book Review: The Year of Magical Thinking

When it comes to the literary establishment, Joan Didion's name seems to inevitably come to mind. Yet while her National Book Award winning The Year of Magical Thinking has plenty of literary references, its reaches far beyond the literary world into a core emotion felt at some point by almost everyone.

The Year of Magical Thinking is Didion's recounting of what many would agree is an absolutely horrible year. Her then 37-year-old daughter, Quintana, is in a coma in a New York hospital. After returning from the hospital on the night of Dec. 30, 2002, Didion's husband, author John Gregory Dunne, collapses at the dinner table from a massive heart attack. So sudden is his death, Didion's initial reaction is that he is joking about the type of day they've had. The fact is, as she repeats throughout the book, "You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."

Dunne's funeral is postponed until after Quintana is released from the hospital, something that in and of itself is not a certainty, and undergoes physical therapy. Then, two days after the funeral, Quintana collapses from a brain hematoma while walking out of the Los Angeles airport. Didion is back to sitting watch over her, this time on the other side of the country.

Many people may not identify with the lives Didion and Dunne led among the literary and Hollywood elite, enjoying trips to Paris and Honolulu and living along the Malibu coast and in New York City. Yet Didion's story is one of everyman. Her talents give us insight into the variety of emotions that come with the death of a close family member and the threat to the life of another. In fact, Didion takes us to some of the deepest levels of emotion in this regard.

Because they were both writers, Didion and Dunne spent virtually every day together. She lost not just her husband but, to use a cliché she does not, her best and most intimate friend. As she more eloquently puts one of the effects of that loss:

Marriage is memory, marriage is time. .... Marriage is not only time: it is also, paradoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John's eyes. I did not age. This year for the first time since I was twenty-nine I saw myself through the eyes of others. This year for the first time since I was twenty-nine I realized that my image of myself was of someone significantly younger.

Although this is something with which most couples with a good marriage may well agree, it comes into focus only as a result of an insight Didion has because of her grief.

Article Author: Tim Gebhart

Tim Gebhart lives in Sioux Falls, SD, where he practices law in order to provide shelter for his family, his dogs, and his books. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and his blog de guerre is A Progressive on the Prairie.

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