The Year of Magical Thinking: National Book Award Winner

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • A landmark work about grief, love, and survival from one of America’s most iconic writers

One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Guardian’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

Joan Didion delivers a searing portrait of a marriage and a life – in good times and bad – that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost a husband or wife or child. In a work of electric honesty and passion, Didion explores how we all, somehow, will ourselves to survive. “An utterly shattering portrait of loss and grief.” –The New York Times

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana Roo, fall ill with septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later, the Dunnes were sitting down to dinner after visiting their daughter in the hospital when John suffered a fatal heart attack. In that one moment, their partnership of forty years came to an end.

This powerful narrative 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.”

“Didion has transformed grief into literature.” —The Guardian

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4.2 out of 5 stars 882

4.4 out of 5 stars 3,263

4.4 out of 5 stars 13,828

4.8 out of 5 stars 378

3.9 out of 5 stars 218

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From one of our most iconic and influential writers: 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. Here are two extended excerpts from notebooks Joan Didion kept in the 1970s; read together, they form a piercing view of the American political and cultural landscape. “A New York Times Notable Book and National Bestseller From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter.” A stunning book of electric honesty and passion that 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. Includes seven books in one volume: the full texts of Slouching Towards Bethlehem; The White Album; Salvador; Miami; After Henry; Political Fictions; and Where I Was From. An incisive and chilling look at a modern world where things are not working as they should—and where the oblique and official language is as sinister as the events it is covering up.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 13, 2007
Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 227 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400078431
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400078431
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.15 x 0.63 x 8 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #1,948 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #6 in Author Biographies #16 in Women’s Biographies #29 in Memoirs (Books)
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