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Overview
Overview
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage-and a life, in good times and bad-that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later-the night before New Year's Eve-the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book 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."
- Format: Hardcover
- Author: Didion, Joan
- ISBN: 9781400043149
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.32 x 0.90
- Number Of Pages: 240
- Publication Year: 2005
Customer Reviews
Rating Snapshot
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Radically honest look at grief
Pickup C. - 5 years 5 months agoI picked this book up at a time I didn't know I needed it the most! It gave me great relief in understanding my own grief after a friend had died. Although Joan Didion's lifestyle is generally unrelatable, the logistical and practical approach she takes to grief was insightful, fascinating, and gave me a lot of hope in working through death. I think this is a must-read for all, and I appreciate her radical honesty in sharing her processing the hardest events of her life. #SpringPicks
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An especially good read for anyone facing the death of a loved one.
HPB S. - 6 years 3 months agoAn amazing read, beautiful prose, thought provoking.
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A study of grief and survival of a loss of a spouse
Mitzi S. - 6 years 3 months agoThis nonfiction book tells about the year after the death of Didion's husband, John Dunne, and her year of "magical thinking" that allowed her to cope with both his death and her daughter's serious illness. The books is raw with her grief while also being informative.