Year of Magical Thinking, The

Paperback, 227 pages

Published Nov. 12, 2006 by HarperPerennial.

ISBN:: 978-0-00-721685-7

(1 review)

"this happened on December 30, 2003. That may seem a while ago but it won't when it happens to you . . ."In this dramatic adaptation of her award-winning, bestselling memoir (which Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times called "an indelible portrait of loss and grief . . . a haunting portrait of a four-decade-long marriage), Joan Didion transforms the story of the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband and their only daughter into a stunning and powerful one-woman play.The first theatrical production of The Year of Magical Thinking opened at the Booth Theatre on March 29, 2007, starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by David Hare.From the Trade Paperback edition.

18 editions

ralentina reviewed Year of Magical Thinking, The by Joan Didion

Of grief

5 stars

I 'picked up' this book by chance, while sleep-deprived and in need of something to read to fill the remaining 9 hours of my layover. I was not expecting to like it - in fact, I expecting nothing at all, because I didn't know what it was about. It was such an intense experience. The Year of Magical Thinking describes the year following the death of Joan Didion's husband (and her daughter falling very, very ill). It gives the impression of having been written in a state of confusion, and pain. Well, it clearly was. It is raw, and yet beautifully written. It is stuffed with random quotes on grief, from poetry, and novels, and academic studies - and yet it does not get boring. There is no room for boredom, because this account of love, and sudden death, and loss of love, and loss of meaning, is so alive.