Julie G (please restore our notifications)'s Reviews > The Year of Magical Thinking

I have a grubby Post-it note by the side of my bed on which I've written in pencil: loss is not always death.

I don't remember anymore if these are my words, a line I wrote down from a book, or something that I took home from therapy, but the wisdom remains: loss is not always death.

I have two friends right now who have been nearly decimated by recent divorces, and they will assure you, quickly, that a significant, life-altering loss does not need to involve death. In fact, both women will let you know, matter-of-factly, that the deaths of their spouses would have resulted in a financial security that the abandonment by their spouses has obliterated.

Loss is not always death.

But here, in Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, loss is absolutely, irrevocably about death.

More specifically, the death of her husband, John.

This is not, as I once suspected, a self-help book, and there aren't, as I once thought, tips here on how to embrace magical thinking.

There is no magical thinking here. . . just a lot of recalled memories, questions about what she could have done differently to prevent her husband's death (nothing) and grieving, grieving, grieving.

This is my first exposure to Joan Didion's writing and I can tell you with great confidence: she can write. The lady can write, no doubt about it.

I highlighted several passages and was often in awe of the way she views life events, in a highly educated, classical sort of way.

However, I had two main issues with this book. Big issues that were almost deal-breakers for me.

My first complaint: the incessant name-dropping. Boy howdy, do I hate name-dropping, and I'm encountering it more and more in memoirs lately. Ms. Didion, for whatever reason, wants you to know that she hangs out with famous people, stays at fancy hotels, and she didn't drive a car, she drove a Corvette.

She is also extremely out of touch with how other people live, and I couldn't honestly tell if this was just a personal limitation or if she wanted us to know that it was the very nature of how special her particular life was with her husband that made her fall so much harder than the rest of us would, if we lost our spouses.

This paragraph of hers is the perfect example of what I'm trying to convey:

Later, after I married and had a child, I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those soufflés, all that crème caramel, all those daubes and albóndigas and gumbos. . . These fragments I have shored against my ruins. . .

Do you see the problem?

It's partly poetic, and partly revolting.

Ms. Didion never drives back to the hotel, she always drives back to the Beverly Wilshire.

The second complaint: her memoir is so very specific to the loss of John versus the loss of spouse, I honestly found that her story lacked general appeal. I understand it is HER story, but I believe that a reader must find themselves somewhere in the pages, in order to remain engaged.

Occasionally, she dug deep and tapped into some more approachable, generalized suffering and this, to me, is when her writing truly hit its mark: my heart.

I would imagine that the hardest part about being separated, divorced or widowed after so many years with a partner would be the living alone, and she captures this feeling ever so poignantly here:

There came a time in the summer when I began feeling fragile, unstable. A sandal would catch on a sidewalk and I would need to run a few steps to avoid a fall. What if I didn't? What if I fell? What would break, who would see the blood streaming down my leg, who would get the taxi, who would be with me in the emergency room? Who would be with me once I got home?

Now that is a fear that most of us would find relatable.

This memoir was not a slam-dunk for me, but I do have great compassion for Ms. Didion's terrible loss and I have found myself kissing my family members more often on the cheeks this week. Sometimes it's good to be reminded that we could lose our loved ones at any time.

I think Ms. Didion's fiction might be a more appropriate undertaking for me, and I will tackle some of it soon, but I do hope her characters dine on something other than daubes and albóndigas.

Whatever the hell those are.