Listen free for 30 days
-
The Year of Magical Thinking
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $4.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Buy it with
-
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
- Written by: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Diane Keaton
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Universally acclaimed from the time it was first published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been admired for decades as a stylistic masterpiece. Academy Award-winning actress Diane Keaton (Annie Hall, The Family Stone) performs these classic essays, including the title piece, which will transport the listener back to a unique time and place: the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco during the neighborhood’s heyday as a countercultural center.
-
-
Poetic book marred by sloppy narration
- By Jay on 2023-02-09
Written by: Joan Didion
-
Blue Nights
- Written by: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.
-
-
Honest and humble
- By Anonymous User on 2023-02-09
Written by: Joan Didion
-
The White Album
- Written by: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Susan Varon
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1979, The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era - including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall - through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central example of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.
-
-
Wonderful Subject Matter, Thoughtful, Funny
- By Jenny on 2022-10-06
Written by: Joan Didion
-
Play It As It Lays
- Written by: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It As It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the listener.
Written by: Joan Didion
-
The Magic Mountain
- Written by: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
-
-
Another masterpiece by Thomas Mann.
- By edmond on 2020-09-10
Written by: Thomas Mann
-
Let Me Tell You What I Mean
- Written by: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Hilton Als
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most iconic and influential writers, the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt. With a forward by Hilton Als, these 12 pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure.
Written by: Joan Didion
-
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
- Written by: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Diane Keaton
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Universally acclaimed from the time it was first published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been admired for decades as a stylistic masterpiece. Academy Award-winning actress Diane Keaton (Annie Hall, The Family Stone) performs these classic essays, including the title piece, which will transport the listener back to a unique time and place: the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco during the neighborhood’s heyday as a countercultural center.
-
-
Poetic book marred by sloppy narration
- By Jay on 2023-02-09
Written by: Joan Didion
-
Blue Nights
- Written by: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.
-
-
Honest and humble
- By Anonymous User on 2023-02-09
Written by: Joan Didion
-
The White Album
- Written by: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Susan Varon
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1979, The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era - including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall - through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central example of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.
-
-
Wonderful Subject Matter, Thoughtful, Funny
- By Jenny on 2022-10-06
Written by: Joan Didion
-
Play It As It Lays
- Written by: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It As It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the listener.
Written by: Joan Didion
-
The Magic Mountain
- Written by: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
-
-
Another masterpiece by Thomas Mann.
- By edmond on 2020-09-10
Written by: Thomas Mann
-
Let Me Tell You What I Mean
- Written by: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Hilton Als
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most iconic and influential writers, the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt. With a forward by Hilton Als, these 12 pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure.
Written by: Joan Didion
-
Just Kids
- Written by: Patti Smith
- Narrated by: Patti Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late 60s and 70s and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.
-
-
Dull zzzz
- By J. Brown on 2023-04-26
Written by: Patti Smith
-
Everything I Know About Love
- A Memoir
- Written by: Dolly Alderton
- Narrated by: Dolly Alderton
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The wildly funny, occasionally heart-breaking internationally best-selling memoir about growing up, growing older, and learning to navigate friendships, jobs, loss, and love along the ride. When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all.
-
-
Kept expecting it to turn the corner
- By m on 2022-05-13
Written by: Dolly Alderton
-
The Better Angels of Our Nature
- Why Violence Has Declined
- Written by: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 36 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
-
-
Better read than listened to
- By Mike Reiter on 2018-01-02
Written by: Steven Pinker
-
It's OK That You're Not OK
- Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand
- Written by: Megan Devine
- Narrated by: Megan Devine
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we help others who have endured tragedy. Having experienced grief from both sides - as both a therapist and as a woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner - Megan writes with deep insight about the unspoken truths of loss, love, and healing.
-
-
My Guiding Star of Grief
- By Albert on 2020-02-12
Written by: Megan Devine
-
Midnight's Children
- Written by: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Lyndam Gregory
- Length: 24 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
-
-
Absolutely awful!!!
- By DR NICHLAS SLADEN-DEW on 2018-08-24
Written by: Salman Rushdie
-
Middlemarch
- Written by: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
-
-
Middlemarch Forever
- By surprise/nutmeg on 2018-09-18
Written by: George Eliot
-
The George Orwell Complete Collection
- 1984; Animal Farm; Down and Out in Paris and London; The Road to Wigan Pier; Burmese Days; Homage to Catalonia; Essays; and More
- Written by: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble, Peter Noble, Leighton Pugh, and others
- Length: 87 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of all George Orwell's greatest works: six novels, three books of non-fiction, a collection of his most well-renowned essays and the complete collection of his poetry.
-
-
Buy the all once
- By Chris on 2022-11-27
Written by: George Orwell
-
The Charles Dickens Collection: 10 Novels
- Great Expectations; A Tale of Two Cities; Nicholas Nickleby; Oliver Twist; Bleak House; Our Mutual Friend; The Old Curiosity Shop; Dombey and Son; Little Dorrit; A Christmas Carol
- Written by: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Mil Nicholson, Bob Neufeld
- Length: 264 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of 10 of Charles Dickens' great novels in one audiobook. The novels included here are A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, Great Expectations, The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Our Mutual Friend, Little Dorrit, Dombey and Son and A Christmas Carol.
Written by: Charles Dickens
-
A Room of One's Own
- Penguin Classics
- Written by: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Natalie Dormer
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing writing on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.
Written by: Virginia Woolf
-
Beautiful Losers
- Written by: Leonard Cohen
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Bronson Pinchot, John Lescault
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, Beautiful Losers is Cohen's most defiant and uninhibited work. As imagined by Cohen, hell is an apartment in Montreal, where a bereaved and lust-tormented narrator reconstructs his relations with the dead. In that hell, two men and a woman twine impossibly and betray one another again and again. Memory blurs into blasphemous sexual fantasy - and redemption takes the form of an Iroquois saint and virgin who has been dead for 300 years but still has the power to save even the most degraded of her suitors.
-
-
shocking
- By Steven on 2022-09-13
Written by: Leonard Cohen
-
How to Do Nothing
- Resisting the Attention Economy
- Written by: Jenny Odell
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity...doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance. So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Our attention is the most precious - and overdrawn - resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind's role in the environment, and find more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.
-
-
ROBOT VOICE narration is UNLISTENABLE!
- By Amazon Customer on 2020-03-17
Written by: Jenny Odell
-
The Things They Carried
- Written by: Tim O'Brien
- Narrated by: Bryan Cranston
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hailed by The New York Times as "a marvel of storytelling", The Things They Carried’s portrayal of the boots-on-the-ground experience of soldiers in the Vietnam War is a landmark in war writing. Now, three-time Emmy Award winner-Bryan Cranston, star of the hit TV series Breaking Bad, delivers an electrifying performance that walks the book’s hallucinatory line between reality and fiction and highlights the emotional power of the spoken word.
-
-
Chilling, Remorseful Story
- By ken l. on 2020-01-21
Written by: Tim O'Brien
Publisher's Summary
National Book Award, Nonfiction, 2005
"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.The weeks and months that followed "cut loose any fixed idea I had about death, about illness, about probability and luck...about marriage and children and memory...about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."
In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion explores with electric honesty and passion a private yet universal experience. Her portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad, will speak directly to anyone who has ever loved a husband, a wife, or a child.
What the critics say
- 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Biography/Memoir
- National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee, Autobiography, 2005
"Many will greet this taut, clear-eyed memoir of grief as a long-awaited return to the terrain of Didion's venerated, increasingly rare personal essays....This is an indispensable addition to Didion's body of work and a lyrical, disciplined entry in the annals of mourning literature." (Publishers Weekly)
"The Year of Magical Thinking is not a downer. On the contrary. Though the material is literally terrible, the writing is exhilarating and what unfolds resembles an adventure narrative." (The New York Times)
More from the same
What listeners say about The Year of Magical Thinking
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Pat O'Grady
- 2020-09-14
Not Necessarily What I'd Hoped For
The narration played a part in preventing me from enjoying this book as much as I'd expected to. While the narrator's voice is nice and clear, I think it would be more well suited to a child's storybook, because she seemed to inject a lot more emotion into segments of the book that, in my mind, would have made more sense in a dead-pan tone, to denote the process of moving painstakingly through the steps that follow a loss and grief process such as Joan's (as described by Joan herself).
As for the book itself, I don't know exactly what I'd hoped for. I think that the book is a deeply personal and fairly scattered account of the year following a loss. If so, I can appreciate it for what I think it was: an almost journalistic description her own grief and reflections, but it felt almost too intimate and over-detailed to have been released to the public. I think that if I'd begun the book with that understanding, I would have appreciated it and enjoyed it in a different way, however I came to this near the end and, therefore, it was often difficult to follow. Paired with the fact that audible doesn't offer the option to read along with the audio, I found my mind wandering almost as soon as I would begin listening to this book. I would have preferred to turn the pages myself.
This is the first book I've read by Joan Didion and it definitely leaves me wondering if her others are written in a similar style. Or if this one stands separate from her other work; almost as if this one was just for her. That I could understand.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bruce Chapman
- 2020-02-25
Great writing
i read this book twenty years ago based on a recommendation of Didion's writings and enjoyed it very much.
I listened to it recently after my wife of nearly 50 years passed away. It had an even deeper impact on me. I can recommend it from both circumstances.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jonathan
- 2023-05-02
Not for me
No idea what this book’s benefit is to the reader. First wasted credit on audible.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 2023-01-20
Not for me
Grief and trauma are widely relatable, but I couldn’t relate to her life in any other meaningful way.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- linda.brown
- 2022-03-21
Mesmerizing
Perhaps it was because I had lost two family members a week apart, one had lived a long life and the other, whose death was inevitable was still sudden in its timing. I was mesmerized by the vivid descriptions of love and loss and listened to this essay on love and life and loss in the dark late into the night. Such a gifted writer was Joan Didion, her husband was right about that all along.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 2022-01-19
Poignant
Joan Didion captures the secret that is grief. Unfortunately grief has become a social secret that you can only know once and until you’ve experienced it and she describes that very experience with grace and compassion. Her descriptions are helpful and validating.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 2020-10-14
Loved it!
My first Joan Didion book but already looking for another one. Great narration, perfect voice for this story. Bravo!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Michael
- 2015-05-08
Great book to Read, but I didn’t like it
I am very glad I read this book, and would recommend it to any adult, but I didn’t like it. It is about grief and loss and a very bad year. Modern American culture does not openly discuss grieving very well, and this is a rare well written book that carefully regards grief. The author packs in a lot of truth about the grieving process that everyone should know, before they have to go through it themselves. It is my opinion every young adult should read this (and A Grief Observed and Being Dead) just to get them ready for what it grief will be like. Grief is an important part of life, and should be prepared for. This is mostly beautifully written, and completely beautifully narrated. I laughed out loud several times, and became slightly verklempt a few times, but didn’t cry.
Usually when I finish a book, I immediately start a new book. Every now and then I finish a book and I feel a need for some time to process it. This was one of those books.
The author did a very good job describing the myriad of feelings and behaviors associated with grief. Yet, I did not agree with what the author presumed about grief and what she felt to do about grief. The author says near the end of the book “there comes a point at which you must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.” This is said at the end of the author’s first year of dealing with grief, so is understandable (yet is still, I think, a misunderstanding). I believe you should never let them go, you should keep them, and keep them alive AND keep them dead, both, always. I hope the author learns this part over time. I think she will.
The author describes the conditions of grief but does not seem to give grief the respect it deserves, and sometimes even seems to consider grief may be a treatable derangement or pathological condition. I do not. I feel normal grief is a natural process in which the brain systematically revisits the all the memories and plans related to the loss, adjusting them for the loss. Grief is hard and important work for the brain, which takes time, and enormous subconscious effort. The external signs of grief can look like depression, and depression can sometimes coexist with grief, but these are two quite different conditions.
The narration is really excellent. Completely clear and enjoyable, with wonderful expressiveness of the numbness, desperation, nonbelief, fears, and humor associated with grieving.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
151 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Darwin8u
- 2014-01-16
Sharp, sometimes funny, but always clear & precise
In four days it will be one year since my father-in-law died in an accidental shooting. He had recently turned 60 and recently celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary. In 18 days it will be four years since my older brother died suddenly in a black hawk crash in Germany. He was closing in on his 40th birthday. He was preparing to land.
I had two father-figures in my life. I also had two brothers. I lost one of each pair suddenly - dramatically. I've watched my wife struggle with the loss of her father. I've watched my mother-in-law struggle with the sad death and absence of her husband. I've watched my sister-in-law and her kids struggle with the death of their husband and father. I've watched my parents, my siblings. I have grieved much myself for these two good men.
I was reading when they died. I know this. When my father-in-law died I was reading 'Falconer'. When my brother died I was reading 'This Is Water'. After their deaths I couldn't read for weeks, and struggled with reading for months. I was in prison. I was drowning in a water I could neither see nor understand.
Reading Didion's sharp, sometimes funny, but always clear and precise take on her husband's death and her daughter's illness ... my experience is reflected. Not exactly. I'm no Joan Didion and my relationship with both my father-in-law and my brother are mine. However, Didion captures in the net of her prose the essence of grief, tragedy, loss, coping, remembering. He memoir makes me wonder how it is even possible that someone could both feel a semblance of what I feel and capture all the sad glitters, glints and mudgyness of mourning at the same time. It takes a helluva writer.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
105 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- Paula Beck
- 2005-11-03
The Best
This is the best book I have ever listened to. Joan Didion has so much insight, and compassion. I wanted to cry whenever I listened, but I didn't want it to end. I was careful who I recommended the book to; some people I know are too fragile to listen to this, I think. The narrator was perfect; you believed she was Joan, and I marvel at her strength in reading the book, because I'm sure she nearly broke down reading some of the passages. Absolutely top notch!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
74 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- YoginiZora
- 2006-04-06
disappointing but heartfelt
I wanted very much to *love* this book. It fell short of my expectation. It was my first introduction to Joan Didion, and she did a very good job of reading it herself. (Can't you just hear the "but" coming....?)
But....
while Didion's book works in both the raw, emotional detritus from her grief and the clinical research studies that she depended on to lead her through the grief process, the word "pretentious" kept coming to mind as I listened to this book.
I say "pretentious" because Didion's constant references to her glamorous literatti lifestyle are very distracting. As one example, she speaks about visiting her daughter in the hospital in LA, and how worried she was about money, and then proceeds to describe the luxury hotel in which she lives for a month.
Didion's mannerisms are also irritating. Every time she references bringing her baby daughter home from the hospital -- which is a LOT of times -- she includes the name of the hospital and the city: "Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica..." It's a bizarre affectation that grated on my ears and nearly led me to turn off the darn book.
Despite Didion's being in a somewhat different orbit than most people I know, her delicate exploration of grief was done well. It meanders, and criss-crosses time, but I think that accurately illustrates how grief makes people reel, as if there's no reliable context for them to continue their living.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
57 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- D. Littman
- 2005-12-01
A wonderful & powerful book
This may be the best audiobook I have downloaded from Audible in more than 2 1/2 years of membership. Richly deserving of the National Book Award for 2005. Didion is a terrific writer. You feel her experience (the narrator makes you believe that she is Didion, not a mean feat). The book opens with the death of her husband, John, and the chronic & serious illness of their adult daughter, Quintana. The book chronicles the next year of Didion's life, dealing with death, being alone, her daughter's condition ... but much of the time either in a sort of state-of-shock or distracted by Quintana's ongoing illness & always with recollections of their past together. The first 1/2, even 3/4 of the book is a bit like a dream sequence, unfocused, just as Didion's life was at the time (a "mudge," as she & her daughter call this feeling). The pace of the book builds & builds, but very subtly, such that when the last 1/4 appears, a more analytical Didion resurfaces and you get the sense of what it was like to be in her shoes over the whole period, and the emptiness of loss, and the need to go on.
This is not a preachy volume nor a depressing volume. If it was, it would not be so powerful. Rather, it is a book you experience by reading. You do not have to have had a loss, like Didion's, to identify with her situation. Because the book is written that well.
A good sign of its quality -- from my standpoint -- is that I plan to keep it on my iPOD to read again. I haven't done that for a single audiobook of the 100+ I've had the pleasure of enjoying from Audible these last few years.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
53 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- M. Greene
- 2006-08-27
once you've been there, you know
This book can be extremely comforting to anyone who lives through the death of a loved one. I can see from reading other reviews that some people don't get it; 3 years ago I wouldn't have either. When you're in "the twilight zone" of grief, you appear to be recovering from loss in a straight-forward, linear fashion--from the outside. Didion captures the jumbled emotions, guilt, irrational thought patterns, dreams, paralysis and flashbacks that she and others have lived through with the presence of mind of a gutsy, professional writer. Thanks, Joan, I'm not crazy after all.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
39 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- Lori
- 2005-12-17
Better: Good Grief
While I enjoyed this book, I think Good Grief by Lolly Winston does a better job of allowing you inside the grief process -- including a very memorable scene of showing up to work in pajamas; knowing it is not right, but unable to stop yourself.
The Year Of Magical Thinking is less about the process of grief and more about memoir and memory. In the end, I wasn't sure where the main character was in her "grief" or what she had been through. Just a lot of snapshots of life before and after the loss. Perhaps that is all it is meant to be.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
29 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Sharon
- 2008-02-29
Very Magical...Very Real
Joan Didion is one of America's treasures. She has always skillfully held her matter of fact mirror up to Americans and says, "This is who you are...love yourself for it."
In this book she provides an honest telling of what a human being does when confronted with ordinary, extremely emotional, sudden shifts of life when their world as they have known it is somehow no longer that.
This is not an inspiring book if you expect to feel as you would after plugging yourself into an episode of OPRAH. It is an inspiring book if you are moved by how the machinery of the human being moves through daily life when that daily life has become unreal. And that unreality becomes what is normal, if even for a time. And, although we know we are not mad, we supposed others are. Because they are not walking the path of our magical world, where somehow we are able to make sense of the chaos. This book is a comfort to anyone going or having gone through mourning. It doesn't give you any answers. We don't need any. We only need to know that our magical world an ordinary experience and it is ok not to feel or be as those not on the path with us think or say we should feel or be.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
22 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- J. Spetz
- 2008-03-17
Some good material, and a lot of repetition
This book tackles the experience of loss in a thoughtful way. The author focuses on her personal experience, but at times draws from the broader literature to seek universality in her experience. The book has some wonderful moments, and some thought-provoking insights. However, the book also has some very tedious sections. As I approached the last two hours of the book, I decided I did not want to finish it. I found myself listening to various podcasts rather than slog through the rest of the book.
One thing that struck me was how rarified a life the author had. Of course, she was a successful author, which guarantees she is not in the mainstream of American life. But there were a few references that exemplified the lack of commonality between her life and mine. For example, she found an old Emily Post book on etiquette, and discussed the value of the guidance given to those whose friends had been bereaved: bring bland foods, don't let the bereaved be alone, how to handle calling hours, etc. This advice was appropriate for friends of an older widow who did not have a job, financial problems, or significant family responsibilities. The situation for most of those bereaved at the time Emily Post wrote her advice was different. Most families did not have bereavement leave, widowhood often brought financial ruin, and the large number of farming families still had to care for their land. Didion's reference to this bit of upper-class etiquette is fitting, because Didion did not have to work, and quite frankly could allow herself a year to fret about the experience of widowhood.
So... I enjoyed parts of the book, but not enough to finish it. I would have liked the book to be about 3 hours shorter, which could have been achieved with tighter editing in the written material. I don't dis-recommend it, but there are many books I've enjoyed a lot more this year.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
21 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- karen
- 2014-03-21
Magnificent. Compelling. Memorable.
Last September my daughter's 41 year old husband lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. As I watched my daughter struggle with her new reality -- single mother, solely responsible, now, for everything, big house, menagerie of animals, not to mention the burden of earning all the income and keeping the family business afloat-- I was seeking ways to help her through a dreadfully painful situation I'd never personally experienced myself. I bought this book to 'preview' for her, hoping that it would turn out to be something she'd take comfort from, too.
That didn't happen. With the tremendous new demands on her time -- not to mention dealing with her own grief and helping her own children through this most difficult situation -- my poor daughter doesn't have time to read or even listen to much of anything these days. But as for me, I loved this book. I couldn't stop listening, finding it to be so insightful, so interesting, so profound that many parts of it will "stick" with me, forever.
And in a way, it did help my daughter, too, because while she hasn't read the book, I see her doing, and saying, some of the very same things that Joan Didion reports herself doing and saying. There is indeed a process of grieving, which obviously does differ from person to person, but which apparently includes many commonalities, too.
Now I understand better what really lies behind some of the things my daughter is doing -- like wanting to keep everything of her husband's just exactly the way he left it, to do everything just the way he did it, to keep everything (it would seem) in readiness -- because there is some lingering, almost unconscious, thought in there somewhere that he just might come back. And yes, as Ms. Didion says, she knows that's not true; that thinking that way makes no sense whatever, and also that this stage isn't permanent, but now I see how a part of the process of grieving plays itself out.
Would I have read/listened to this book if grief hadn't entered our family? Probably not, I'm not a dedicated fan of Ms. Didion, although now I may see out some of her other books I haven't read, just for the pleasure of absorbing the sheer simplicity and heartfelt clarity with which she writes. Whatever, this is a lovely, not-terribly-sad, but profoundly insightful account of one widow's journey.
And one more thing: I normally don't care for musical accompaniment or transitional interludes in audiobooks, I tend to want the narrator to just read the book. But there are moments in this recording where an exquisite piano solo eases a transition from one chapter to another that greatly enhances the mood of the book. It's just really well done. The whole thing is well done.
I highly recommend this perfectly-narrated book to anyone who has an interest, for whatever reason.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
19 people found this helpful