{"id":8313,"date":"2026-01-26T19:03:36","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T19:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/?p=8313"},"modified":"2026-01-26T19:05:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T19:05:35","slug":"the-year-of-living-magically-joan-didion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/2026\/01\/26\/the-year-of-living-magically-joan-didion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Year of Living Magically, Joan Didion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br><em>The Year of Living Magically, <\/em>Joan Didion, 2005<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-purple-color\">January 2026<\/mark><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a celebrated book by a celebrated author. It appeared in the NY Times\u2019 (or possibly that Atlantic\u2019s) 100 Best books of the (1<sup>st<\/sup>&nbsp;Quarter) of the 21<sup>st<\/sup>&nbsp;Century, and was one of a handful of books (Station Eleven is another) that I decided to read this year as a consequence of seeing it there.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The book is a memoir of a year in Didion\u2019s life following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. It is, essentially, a study of profound grief, and the way in which Didion (and perhaps others) try to come to grips with it. During this period, her daughter, Quintanna, was in and out of hospital ICUs, exacerbating Didion\u2019s difficulties. As the title suggests, Didion focuses on her disordered thinking, documenting \u2018magical\u2019 beliefs that her husband would come back to her, that discarding his effects would prevent his return, that she could have done things differently and thus avoided his (medically predictable) death.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The book is intense, and jumps around to different moments in time. Unlike other things I\u2019ve read by Didion, I don\u2019t find her use of language compelling. Possibly it would repay study of the structure, if one is writing a memoir, but for my purposes it does not offer a lot. Although I can\u2019t say that I\u2019m happy I\u2019ve read it, due to the difficult subject matter, it was worthwhile, and I think will make me more sensitive to the ways in which grief can manifest itself.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">#  #  #<\/h1>\n<p>Views: 20<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Year of Living Magically, Joan Didion, 2005 January 2026 This is a celebrated book by a celebrated author. It appeared in the NY Times\u2019 (or possibly that Atlantic\u2019s) 100 Best books of the (1st&nbsp;Quarter) of the 21st&nbsp;Century, and was one of a handful of books (Station Eleven is another) that I decided to read &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/2026\/01\/26\/the-year-of-living-magically-joan-didion\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Year of Living Magically, Joan Didion<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[36,39,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-notes","category-craft-of-writing","category-other-nonfiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8314,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8313\/revisions\/8314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}