The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion is a book that was recommended to me a long time ago. Clearly, I didn't read the blurb on Amazon and I was expecting a work of fiction. It isn't. It's an account of death and grief.
Joan Didion's husband died suddenly of a heart attack, while their only child was in hospital fighting septic shock brought on by a flu and pneumonia. They were sitting at the dinner table - one moment he was talking, the next he wasn't.
In this book, Didion surveys the year following her husband's death, her feelings, or rather her numbness, how the slightest little thing would drag her back into the vortex, if she found herself in a place that held memories for her and her husband, and her inability to accept the fact that he's not coming back.
Being a writer, Didion is someone who takes her research seriously. She tries to find some literature that would help her understand what happened, and deal with her feelings, and she quotes plenty of learned tomes that really don't help her at all - only a book on etiquette seems to hit a chord with her. Interestingly, this book has now become the reference point for people grieving. It didn't make me cry - which I think is good - but I felt it immensely compelling.
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