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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Year of Magical Thinking (originale 2005; edizione 2007)di Joan Didion
Informazioni sull'operaL' anno del pensiero magico di Joan Didion (2005)
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Didion's writing always makes me think of a Faberge egg. At once so elegant, with every word placed with a jeweler's precision, and also so artificial. I've read a couple of her novels, some of her essays, and although I am in awe at her skill with structure, language, and subtext, and the control with which she arranges her words, I'm never left wanting to read more. In this memoir, her fierce intelligence, her rationalism all come out on the page. Her emotion, less so. I am left to assume what I would be feeling in a similar circumstance. It is only because I already know how rational and controlled she is that I can sense her distress as her rationality and control fail to (in her words), "manage the situation." When her rationality fails, period. If I did not already know these things about Joan Didion, I would define her as the social worker in the hospital defined her, as a "cool customer." But these are the only weapons she has to grapple with the terrible tsunami of grief. And when her daughter falls ill, it is these weapons that enable her to again, manage the situation. I was also struck by her position and privilege. Her matter-of-factness when speaking of the people she knows who "have influence at State or Justice," her ability to fly to Paris or Honolulu at essentially a moment's notice, her coterie of friends and family who have houses in various places and where she can ask for permission to stay as she keeps a vigil over her daughter in the hospital. The silver. The china. The wine. The many restaurants where she and her husband have eaten. Her privilege is on the page more than her passion; and it isn't even that I mind so much -- it's that she seems so unconscious of it. And although none of that could prevent her husband from dying, or ease the pain of her loss, there is no question that it smoothed the path. I read this right after I read Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and there couldn't be two books more different, although they have the common frame of grief. But each one served to illuminate the other. Joan Didion's loss caused her to have "cognitive deficiencies:" she misremembered dates and addresses and lost bits of the last days with her husband. Strayed's cognitive deficiencies took the form of drug use and infidelity. Didion picked up her pen, and Strayed picked up a backpack. But neither of them were in their right minds. I'm really not sure whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars, and I think part of why I gave it 3 is because a lot of the other reviews on here mentioned that it does name and place drop frequently. So if you aren't into that I get it, I have felt the same way about many other memoirs I have read. The difference with this one is that this book was intended for Joan Didion; she is writing it to help her explain her grief and mourning process to herself, and this aspect of the book is just her recounting her every day life. She's a famous writer, her friends are famous people, and that's okay. The other note I have is that unless you have experienced tremendous loss you probably will not enjoy (or at least get something out of) this book. The first time I started reading this book I had to put it down for a few months, because I understood far too well the irrational thoughts she had about her husband's passing, and my own loss was far too raw to explore. I do recommend it if you are looking for some solace in how others deal with grief and hardship, and am glad to have a fancy phrase of "magical thinking" to fall back on.
Essayistic and concise, seeking external points of comparison, trying to set her case in some wider context. The book is, as promised, extraordinary. The Year of Magical Thinking is raw, brutal, compact, precise, immediate, literate, and, given the subject matter, astonishingly readable. Though the material is literally terrible, the writing is exhilarating and what unfolds resembles an adventure narrative: a forced expedition into those "cliffs of fall" identified by Hopkins. The Year of Magical Thinking , though it spares nothing in describing Didion's confusion, grief and derangement, is a work of surpassing clarity and honesty. It may not provide "meaning" to her husband's death or her daughter's illness, but it describes their effects on her with unsparing candor. It was not written as a self-help handbook for the bereaved but as a journey into a place that none of us can fully imagine until we have been there. Ha l'adattamentoHa come guida per lo studentePremi e riconoscimentiMenzioniElenchi di rilievo
Biography & Autobiography.
Nonfiction.
HTML: Didion's journalistic skills are displayed as never before in this story of a year in her life that began with her daughter in a medically induced coma and her husband unexpectedly dead due to a heart attack. This powerful and moving work is Didion's "attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." With vulnerability and passion, Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience of love and loss. THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING will speak directly to anyone who has ever loved a husband, wife, or child. .Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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I read this book 10 years after my father's death. I am closing on 51. The obituaries in the paper begin to have more and more people my age or younger. Death is beginning to feel more familiar in my life. I think about my own death and those I love and cherish. How will I "cope" with that time of grief and mourning again? Ten years have gone by and I still selfishly miss my father in my life. It does happen less frequently, but then I chastise myself for not missing him more. Mourning is very selfish.
Thanks Ms Didion for sharing your journey. ( )