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Noites Azuis: A continuação de "O ano do pensamento mágico"
Este é um livro sobre saudade. E sobre solidão. Sobre reavaliar o passado para descobrir se é possível planejar um futuro. Sobre como o tempo passa, mas algumas dores perduram inabaláveis, persistentes, certas como o crepúsculo no final da tarde.
Este livro é, acima de tudo, sobre detalhes.
Noites azuis tem início em 26 de julho de 2010. Neste mesmo dia, sete anos antes, Quintana Roo, filha de Joan Didion com o também escritor John Gregory Dunne, se casava na catedral de são João, o Divino, em Nova York. Os jasmins em sua trança, a tatuagem da pluméria transparecendo sob o tule, os colares havaianos... detalhes simples que desencadeiam memórias vívidas da infância da jovem em Malibu, em Brentwood, e na escola, em Holmby Hills. Refletindo sobre sua filha, mas também sobre seu papel como mãe, Didion faz a pergunta que todo pai já se fez em algum momento da vida: fiz tudo o que poderia ter feito? Que detalhe passou despercebido? Que detalhe poderia fazer a diferença nos anos seguintes para evitar a fatídica saudade que hoje é sentida?
Joan Didion, a premiada autora de O ano do pensamento mágico, apresenta um doloroso, comovente e sincero relato sobre a perda de sua filha em 2005. Entre lembranças tocantes e, em alguns casos, dilacerantes, a escritora analisa seus próprios medos, angústias e dúvidas e, ao fazê-lo, compara sua vida ao período das chamadas noites azuis: “o oposto do declínio da claridade, mas também seu aviso.”
“A mestra da prosa americana mais uma vez volta seu olhar afiado para a própria família nesta deslumbrante sequência de O ano do pensamento mágico.”
— Newsweek
“Didion é a melhor ensaísta da América.”
— The New York Review of Books
“Devastador... Um inquérito arrebatador sobre perda e uma meditação melancólica sobre mortalidade e tempo.”
— The New York Times
116 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 1, 2011
2203 people are currently reading
75637 people want to read
About the author
Joan Didion
101 books17.1k followersJoan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.
Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United States's foreign policy in Latin America. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by president Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.
Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United States's foreign policy in Latin America. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by president Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,619 reviews
May 2, 2022
i'm left in awe of how much love joan didion had for the people in her life, and how much unbearable grief she experienced as she lost them.
this is much more all over the place, and not quite as compelling as, the year of magical thinking, but the loving way in which joan depicts her daughter is enough to make up the difference.
what an artist, what a life, what tragedies.
between the loss of joan didion and the losses she suffered, this is such an emotive book. wow.
bottom line: my year of joan continues blissfully.
---------------
currently-reading updates
binge reading joan didion's grief memoirs because i don't know how to be normal
---------------
tbr review
help, i've fallen [in love with joan didion] and i can't get up
this is much more all over the place, and not quite as compelling as, the year of magical thinking, but the loving way in which joan depicts her daughter is enough to make up the difference.
what an artist, what a life, what tragedies.
between the loss of joan didion and the losses she suffered, this is such an emotive book. wow.
bottom line: my year of joan continues blissfully.
---------------
currently-reading updates
binge reading joan didion's grief memoirs because i don't know how to be normal
---------------
tbr review
help, i've fallen [in love with joan didion] and i can't get up
April 23, 2024
I wanted to like this book more than I did.
I am very sorry poor Joan D's husband died, and then her only child is dead. But, she writes this book in a confusing way, and I'm not sure what to make of it. Even the title phrase, which she tries to explain, is elusive to me.
I learned way more about her life and her daughter in her prior book (The Yr of Magical Thinking). That topic was the sad and sudden death of her husband.
This book is about the sad and not sudden death of her daughter, who died less than two years after Mr. Dunne died. If your child dies, how are you supposed to make it into a nice, readable tale?
But I was not very thrilled with this book. I don't know how likeable the narrator is. I can't understand if her daughter, named Quintana, was a trunk-full of trouble growing up, or not. There is mention of diagnosis and some mental problems, but it is not explained.
The daughter is adopted, and I was expecting a more heartfelt quest for parenthood that you commonly hear from adoptive families. This was nothing like that, it seemed to happen on a lark--mentioning they were trying to have a baby (Ms. Didion was in her early thirties or late twenties, I think. She was not too old to conceive by general standards, but nothing is explained.), and then someone who knew a Dr. so and so, who called them, and they went and got the baby.
She does recount the bio family connecting up with her daughter, but there is no emotional expression that colors it. It is factual and clinical and kind of dull. Ms. Didion has regrets about the kind of mother she was, but she does not really get into it, but she seems almost defensive over the "privileged" life she gave her daughter. This is odd, because there are no apologies for the extravagant life style.
And I got annoyed with the life style--she and John live it up on expense accounts, presumably movie companies and publishers. It makes me uncomfortable when perfectly well off people are such sponges. Flying to Hawaii, to Europe, summers in France and so on. If now she wasn't all alone and sad, I might be jealous.
There is an annoying tale of strange bitterness involving the house she had in California. She wrote about it enough in the "Yr of Magical Thinking", here it is again. She and her husband sold the house, moved to NYC. The buyer flattered their bookish egos, and then tore the whole place down and built a new one. It wasn't even a wonderful house, but J.D. still is bothered by this apparent unfair treatment. It is one topic she is clear about that hurt her.
I have read some of JD's other books and I like her style, but in this case, it has its limits. She mentions Quintana's husband, but he does not get one adjective. Was he tall? Was he loud? Was he kind? It is disconcerting she is unwilling to depict him, but instead will recount the patterns of hospital curtains. She will mention where the wedding cake came from many times, it means nothing to me. What designer dress was that? I don't care, your upper class trappings don't resonate.
The content is often utterly uninteresting, such as a verse from the Eagles' song "Hotel California". This thinness seems to be embellished with passages having repeated phrases and their cadences. It just did not work for me. An only child of intellectuals is bound to be precocious, and all kids say fascinating things, something Ms. D. seems oblivious to. She repeats the story of Q.'s child hood fear of "the broken man"--it means more to the parents than it does to the kid. It is not exactly bragging, but J.D. seems to think it is some sort of incredible clue to the rare brain of her kid.
I am not sure if her writing this book was anything more than just making some coin. Maybe she got bad advice. I do feel sorry for her, not because she is alone and old, because we will all be old (or dead), and you are always alone. I feel sorry for her because she seemed to lose her footing in life (happens to everyone), and trying to write about it does not seem to help.
I am very sorry poor Joan D's husband died, and then her only child is dead. But, she writes this book in a confusing way, and I'm not sure what to make of it. Even the title phrase, which she tries to explain, is elusive to me.
I learned way more about her life and her daughter in her prior book (The Yr of Magical Thinking). That topic was the sad and sudden death of her husband.
This book is about the sad and not sudden death of her daughter, who died less than two years after Mr. Dunne died. If your child dies, how are you supposed to make it into a nice, readable tale?
But I was not very thrilled with this book. I don't know how likeable the narrator is. I can't understand if her daughter, named Quintana, was a trunk-full of trouble growing up, or not. There is mention of diagnosis and some mental problems, but it is not explained.
The daughter is adopted, and I was expecting a more heartfelt quest for parenthood that you commonly hear from adoptive families. This was nothing like that, it seemed to happen on a lark--mentioning they were trying to have a baby (Ms. Didion was in her early thirties or late twenties, I think. She was not too old to conceive by general standards, but nothing is explained.), and then someone who knew a Dr. so and so, who called them, and they went and got the baby.
She does recount the bio family connecting up with her daughter, but there is no emotional expression that colors it. It is factual and clinical and kind of dull. Ms. Didion has regrets about the kind of mother she was, but she does not really get into it, but she seems almost defensive over the "privileged" life she gave her daughter. This is odd, because there are no apologies for the extravagant life style.
And I got annoyed with the life style--she and John live it up on expense accounts, presumably movie companies and publishers. It makes me uncomfortable when perfectly well off people are such sponges. Flying to Hawaii, to Europe, summers in France and so on. If now she wasn't all alone and sad, I might be jealous.
There is an annoying tale of strange bitterness involving the house she had in California. She wrote about it enough in the "Yr of Magical Thinking", here it is again. She and her husband sold the house, moved to NYC. The buyer flattered their bookish egos, and then tore the whole place down and built a new one. It wasn't even a wonderful house, but J.D. still is bothered by this apparent unfair treatment. It is one topic she is clear about that hurt her.
I have read some of JD's other books and I like her style, but in this case, it has its limits. She mentions Quintana's husband, but he does not get one adjective. Was he tall? Was he loud? Was he kind? It is disconcerting she is unwilling to depict him, but instead will recount the patterns of hospital curtains. She will mention where the wedding cake came from many times, it means nothing to me. What designer dress was that? I don't care, your upper class trappings don't resonate.
The content is often utterly uninteresting, such as a verse from the Eagles' song "Hotel California". This thinness seems to be embellished with passages having repeated phrases and their cadences. It just did not work for me. An only child of intellectuals is bound to be precocious, and all kids say fascinating things, something Ms. D. seems oblivious to. She repeats the story of Q.'s child hood fear of "the broken man"--it means more to the parents than it does to the kid. It is not exactly bragging, but J.D. seems to think it is some sort of incredible clue to the rare brain of her kid.
I am not sure if her writing this book was anything more than just making some coin. Maybe she got bad advice. I do feel sorry for her, not because she is alone and old, because we will all be old (or dead), and you are always alone. I feel sorry for her because she seemed to lose her footing in life (happens to everyone), and trying to write about it does not seem to help.
January 26, 2022
HO VISTO CON I MIEI OCCHI LE PORTE DELLA CATTEDRALE SBARRATE ALLE SEI
Quintana Roo, figlia adottiva della coppia di scrittori e sceneggiatori Dunne-Didion, è morta a trentanove anni forse per una rara forma di influenza aviaria.
Mi sono innamorato di questa scrittrice, scoperta per caso, prendendo in mano un libro fresco di stampa con bei colori in copertina, Diglielo da parte mia [Edizioni e/o, il primo titolo della collana “Intramontabili”].
Quello era un romanzo, questo è un memoir.
Di lei ho letto più di un romanzo e un altro memoir, e saggi giornalistici.
Così è successo che mi sono innamorato della scrittrice in lingua inglese dalla prosa più bella, per dirla con Michiko Kakutani.
Joan Didion infarcisce i suoi libri di quello che in inglese si potrebbe definire “name dropping”, pratica insopportabile, da pseudo snob: con lei però diventa cultura.
Joan Didion forse è una snob, è una da Upper East Side (abita esattamente lì) – Concita De Gregorio nel recensirla scrive che il lettore deve superare ostacoli per varcare la soglia narrativa di questa scrittrice, donna probabilmente tanto odiosa nella vita pubblica quanto disperatamente fragile in quella privata...
Ostacoli, possibili difetti e limiti, che io ho superato in un attimo godendo la lettura parola per parola. E innamorandomi dell'artista che è in lei.
Perché Joan Didion è prima di tutto una magnifica scrittrice che usa le parole nel modo migliore, le cesella, gioca con loro, le sposta, le ferma, creando effetti di cambiamento e moltiplicazione dei significati, come si fa spostando angolo e altezza di una macchina da presa o fotografica.
Come se i ricordi fossero una consolazione. I ricordi non lo sono. I ricordi, per definizione, riguardano tempi andati, cose che non ci sono più… I ricordi sono tutto ciò che non vuoi più ricordare.
Le notti azzurre del titolo si riferiscono a una luce particolare del cielo all’ora del crepuscolo all’inizio dell’estate a certe latitudini (New York sì, California no): sono le notti che portano l’estate, insieme alla consapevolezza che l’estate finirà.
Le notti azzurre sono l’opposto della morte del fulgore, ma ne sono anche l’annuncio.
I corsivi, che sono frasi, pensieri, citazioni che ritornano, sono riproposti quando non li aspetto, e il senso cambia, il significato va oltre. Sono colpi di rasoio queste ripetizioni in corsivo, sono frasi musicali.
In venti mesi questa donna ha visto la sua vita totalmente stravolta: la mattina di natale del 2003 sua figlia finisce in un reparto di terapia intensiva; cinque giorni dopo il marito, 40 anni di vita insieme 24 ore su 24 al giorno, le muore davanti agli occhi seduto al tavolo della cena; nell’agosto del 2005 muore la figlia, Quintana Roo, l’unica figlia, che da quella vigilia di natale è passata da un ospedale all’altro, ha concesso una breve speranza, subito delusa.
Una storia di abbandono, partendo dal primo subìto dalla neonata presa in adozione, giungendo a quello della donna che sopravvive alla perdita del marito e della figlia.
La piccola Quintana dava un nome alle sue paure, Broken Man, l’Uomo Spezzato, che arriva e ti porta via, ti fa abbandonare chi ti vuole bene. A soli 39 anni, l’Uomo Spezzato l’ha presa e portata via.
La madre, ormai anziana, si ritrova del tutto sola: seduta alla sua scrivania sfoglia con la propria coscienza l’album dei ricordi.
1972
E Joan scrive: è quello che sa fare – quello che sa fare molto bene, quello che ha sempre fatto per dare un senso a quello che senso non ha. E produce due libri, due memoir, uno più bello dell’altro, due lezioni di vita e di letteratura.
Questo è il secondo dei due, è l’ultima cosa data alle stampe da questa scrittrice che il prossimo 5 dicembre farà 80 anni.
La paura non è per ciò che è andato perso. La paura è per ciò che c’è ancora da perdere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXeSb...
PS
Rendo a Concita De Gregorio quello che le spetta: la mia citazione è fuorviante, la sua recensione di questo libro è bella e appassionata.
Quintana Roo, figlia adottiva della coppia di scrittori e sceneggiatori Dunne-Didion, è morta a trentanove anni forse per una rara forma di influenza aviaria.
Mi sono innamorato di questa scrittrice, scoperta per caso, prendendo in mano un libro fresco di stampa con bei colori in copertina, Diglielo da parte mia [Edizioni e/o, il primo titolo della collana “Intramontabili”].
Quello era un romanzo, questo è un memoir.
Di lei ho letto più di un romanzo e un altro memoir, e saggi giornalistici.
Così è successo che mi sono innamorato della scrittrice in lingua inglese dalla prosa più bella, per dirla con Michiko Kakutani.
Joan Didion infarcisce i suoi libri di quello che in inglese si potrebbe definire “name dropping”, pratica insopportabile, da pseudo snob: con lei però diventa cultura.
Joan Didion forse è una snob, è una da Upper East Side (abita esattamente lì) – Concita De Gregorio nel recensirla scrive che il lettore deve superare ostacoli per varcare la soglia narrativa di questa scrittrice, donna probabilmente tanto odiosa nella vita pubblica quanto disperatamente fragile in quella privata...
Ostacoli, possibili difetti e limiti, che io ho superato in un attimo godendo la lettura parola per parola. E innamorandomi dell'artista che è in lei.
Perché Joan Didion è prima di tutto una magnifica scrittrice che usa le parole nel modo migliore, le cesella, gioca con loro, le sposta, le ferma, creando effetti di cambiamento e moltiplicazione dei significati, come si fa spostando angolo e altezza di una macchina da presa o fotografica.
Come se i ricordi fossero una consolazione. I ricordi non lo sono. I ricordi, per definizione, riguardano tempi andati, cose che non ci sono più… I ricordi sono tutto ciò che non vuoi più ricordare.
Le notti azzurre del titolo si riferiscono a una luce particolare del cielo all’ora del crepuscolo all’inizio dell’estate a certe latitudini (New York sì, California no): sono le notti che portano l’estate, insieme alla consapevolezza che l’estate finirà.
Le notti azzurre sono l’opposto della morte del fulgore, ma ne sono anche l’annuncio.
I corsivi, che sono frasi, pensieri, citazioni che ritornano, sono riproposti quando non li aspetto, e il senso cambia, il significato va oltre. Sono colpi di rasoio queste ripetizioni in corsivo, sono frasi musicali.
In venti mesi questa donna ha visto la sua vita totalmente stravolta: la mattina di natale del 2003 sua figlia finisce in un reparto di terapia intensiva; cinque giorni dopo il marito, 40 anni di vita insieme 24 ore su 24 al giorno, le muore davanti agli occhi seduto al tavolo della cena; nell’agosto del 2005 muore la figlia, Quintana Roo, l’unica figlia, che da quella vigilia di natale è passata da un ospedale all’altro, ha concesso una breve speranza, subito delusa.
Una storia di abbandono, partendo dal primo subìto dalla neonata presa in adozione, giungendo a quello della donna che sopravvive alla perdita del marito e della figlia.
La piccola Quintana dava un nome alle sue paure, Broken Man, l’Uomo Spezzato, che arriva e ti porta via, ti fa abbandonare chi ti vuole bene. A soli 39 anni, l’Uomo Spezzato l’ha presa e portata via.
La madre, ormai anziana, si ritrova del tutto sola: seduta alla sua scrivania sfoglia con la propria coscienza l’album dei ricordi.
1972
E Joan scrive: è quello che sa fare – quello che sa fare molto bene, quello che ha sempre fatto per dare un senso a quello che senso non ha. E produce due libri, due memoir, uno più bello dell’altro, due lezioni di vita e di letteratura.
Questo è il secondo dei due, è l’ultima cosa data alle stampe da questa scrittrice che il prossimo 5 dicembre farà 80 anni.
La paura non è per ciò che è andato perso. La paura è per ciò che c’è ancora da perdere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXeSb...
PS
Rendo a Concita De Gregorio quello che le spetta: la mia citazione è fuorviante, la sua recensione di questo libro è bella e appassionata.
December 18, 2011
I should preface this review by saying that I adore Joan Didion's writing. There really is no one better at cataloguing the social chaos and energy that defines a specific shot of history than her. I grew up in the California of the 1960s and 1970s, and if anyone asks me about those years, I point to her. Like most of her readers, I read with such sadness about the death of her husband and daughter, and finished her book The Year of Magical Thinking with such profound respect; she defined unfathomable grief with words.
Blue Nights—her ode to her daughter, Quintana—is also a well-written book, but when I finished it, I slapped it down on my dining room table with a rare sense of irritation. With most books there is you, the reader, who is, hopefully, at the mercy of the author. The author pulls you into their world. Generally, you don't pull them into theirs. When that happens, a book sort of fails. I didn't get pulled into Joan Didion's world. As a parent, I couldn't help but pull her into mine, and the parent in me was snorting in disbelief and sometimes outrage. There is an underlying question throughout the whole book: was she a good enough parent? I can't really answer that question. It's a question that all parents ask themselves frequently, although usually not hand-in-hand with mourning a child's death (and, yes, this is the worst thing that can happen to a parent, bar none). But it's hard not to stare in disbelief when she comments that her daughter was terrified that her father would go first because then Quintana would be under the care and responsibility of her mother. Why wouldn't she be terrified? This is the same woman who felt it was perfectly acceptable to bring her infant to a reporting assignment covering the fall of Saigon. Who thought it appropriate in response to this assignment to go out and buy a bunch of designer clothes. And while this disconnect with reality is a trademark of hers, it might work for her persona as a writer, it fails when we consider her as a parent. As a writer, we might find it privately amusing that she would fly from Honolulu and arrive in Hartford when it was below zero without a sweater. When it’s her kid shivering, then it’s impossible to not judge her. The reader takes a back-seat to the parent.
Didion's detachment has always been her strength. But it's an odd detachment, which is why I think it works so well in her writing. Because it's the detachment of the walking wounded. Someone so battered by reality that detachment is the only way to survive. It's the detachment of someone trying to make sense out of the nonsensical. As a parent (and please don't assume that I think I'm a fantastic parent--merely adequate), I'm listening to her questioning her efficacy as a parent, and I feel like shouting, honey, it's not about you. That's what parenting is. It's not about you. Which seems manifestly unfair because her writing has always been about her and not about her. But you can't carry that sensibility into parenting. I read over these verbal snapshots of her life and marriage, and all I can think of was that Quintana never got to be a child. She’s described as being precocious in this book, but to me it feels like more of a coping mechanism. They may have loved her unquestionably, but the Dunnes went on location, stayed in swanky hotels, wrote their articles, movie scripts, and books, and dragged her along for the ride. She had to become an adult in a child’s body.
So much for the personal issues I had with this book. We come to the writing. The last third of the book is devoted to Didion’s sense that she is losing her ability to write. It's part and parcel of other physical frailties, but although the physical maladies are terrifying, they pale in contrast to the idea that she's losing her truly wonderful way of parsing words. That her style is becoming trite, that an ability to write so clearly about the lack of center is now suffering from not having its own center.
And while I can't say that her writing falls short (the beginning of this book is as masterful a beginning as I've ever read), there is a sense of, um, where's the editor? Her repetition of phrases and concepts that in previous works united a bunch of seemingly disparate events to create a fractured whole, now does seem something of a tic.
Another stylistic choice that seemed to dominate this book was, for want of a better word, product placement. And by that I mean it is never a pair of shoes, a hotel, a sweater; it's Laboutins, the Dorchester, cashmere. Truly, are we supposed to lament that Bendel's is no longer the same? Even people are nothing more than product placement. This actress, this director gave a speech at Quintana's wedding.
Part of the strength of Didion's work written in the 1960s and the 1970s is that the protagonists of her essays were no different than you or I, except that maybe they were part of Manson's family. And although that is a hell of a difference, in her hands it was also not a hell of a difference. A "there but for the grace of God" sensibility dominated. In her current work everyone has a name. A big name. Almost like these larger than life people had no right to up and die. Unlike you and me. Because we don't have names. It's unsettling at first and then becomes annoying. It undercuts the real issue in this book. The loss of her daughter. Does it really matter that she went to school with and had dinner at this restaurant with this Hollywood icon? It doesn't make her passing any more tragic, although there is the hint that she was special because of it. When in reality, she was special because she was so loved.
In the end I certainly would recommend this book because Joan Didion is one of the most thoughtful and fantastic writers of her generation, but Blue Nights doesn't have the strength of The Year of Magical Thinking. I think this is the most personal of her books (for obvious reasons), but it's also one of her weaker books, perhaps the inevitable fall out of the detached finally becoming attached with little to attach to.
Blue Nights—her ode to her daughter, Quintana—is also a well-written book, but when I finished it, I slapped it down on my dining room table with a rare sense of irritation. With most books there is you, the reader, who is, hopefully, at the mercy of the author. The author pulls you into their world. Generally, you don't pull them into theirs. When that happens, a book sort of fails. I didn't get pulled into Joan Didion's world. As a parent, I couldn't help but pull her into mine, and the parent in me was snorting in disbelief and sometimes outrage. There is an underlying question throughout the whole book: was she a good enough parent? I can't really answer that question. It's a question that all parents ask themselves frequently, although usually not hand-in-hand with mourning a child's death (and, yes, this is the worst thing that can happen to a parent, bar none). But it's hard not to stare in disbelief when she comments that her daughter was terrified that her father would go first because then Quintana would be under the care and responsibility of her mother. Why wouldn't she be terrified? This is the same woman who felt it was perfectly acceptable to bring her infant to a reporting assignment covering the fall of Saigon. Who thought it appropriate in response to this assignment to go out and buy a bunch of designer clothes. And while this disconnect with reality is a trademark of hers, it might work for her persona as a writer, it fails when we consider her as a parent. As a writer, we might find it privately amusing that she would fly from Honolulu and arrive in Hartford when it was below zero without a sweater. When it’s her kid shivering, then it’s impossible to not judge her. The reader takes a back-seat to the parent.
Didion's detachment has always been her strength. But it's an odd detachment, which is why I think it works so well in her writing. Because it's the detachment of the walking wounded. Someone so battered by reality that detachment is the only way to survive. It's the detachment of someone trying to make sense out of the nonsensical. As a parent (and please don't assume that I think I'm a fantastic parent--merely adequate), I'm listening to her questioning her efficacy as a parent, and I feel like shouting, honey, it's not about you. That's what parenting is. It's not about you. Which seems manifestly unfair because her writing has always been about her and not about her. But you can't carry that sensibility into parenting. I read over these verbal snapshots of her life and marriage, and all I can think of was that Quintana never got to be a child. She’s described as being precocious in this book, but to me it feels like more of a coping mechanism. They may have loved her unquestionably, but the Dunnes went on location, stayed in swanky hotels, wrote their articles, movie scripts, and books, and dragged her along for the ride. She had to become an adult in a child’s body.
So much for the personal issues I had with this book. We come to the writing. The last third of the book is devoted to Didion’s sense that she is losing her ability to write. It's part and parcel of other physical frailties, but although the physical maladies are terrifying, they pale in contrast to the idea that she's losing her truly wonderful way of parsing words. That her style is becoming trite, that an ability to write so clearly about the lack of center is now suffering from not having its own center.
And while I can't say that her writing falls short (the beginning of this book is as masterful a beginning as I've ever read), there is a sense of, um, where's the editor? Her repetition of phrases and concepts that in previous works united a bunch of seemingly disparate events to create a fractured whole, now does seem something of a tic.
Another stylistic choice that seemed to dominate this book was, for want of a better word, product placement. And by that I mean it is never a pair of shoes, a hotel, a sweater; it's Laboutins, the Dorchester, cashmere. Truly, are we supposed to lament that Bendel's is no longer the same? Even people are nothing more than product placement. This actress, this director gave a speech at Quintana's wedding.
Part of the strength of Didion's work written in the 1960s and the 1970s is that the protagonists of her essays were no different than you or I, except that maybe they were part of Manson's family. And although that is a hell of a difference, in her hands it was also not a hell of a difference. A "there but for the grace of God" sensibility dominated. In her current work everyone has a name. A big name. Almost like these larger than life people had no right to up and die. Unlike you and me. Because we don't have names. It's unsettling at first and then becomes annoying. It undercuts the real issue in this book. The loss of her daughter. Does it really matter that she went to school with and had dinner at this restaurant with this Hollywood icon? It doesn't make her passing any more tragic, although there is the hint that she was special because of it. When in reality, she was special because she was so loved.
In the end I certainly would recommend this book because Joan Didion is one of the most thoughtful and fantastic writers of her generation, but Blue Nights doesn't have the strength of The Year of Magical Thinking. I think this is the most personal of her books (for obvious reasons), but it's also one of her weaker books, perhaps the inevitable fall out of the detached finally becoming attached with little to attach to.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 26, 2025
A few years ago I was riveted by Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, the memoir about coping with the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Blue Nights is Didion's subsequent memoir and dedicated to her daughter, Quintana Roo. Didion's powerful writing is both beautiful and heartbreaking as she mourns the loss of her daughter and her struggles to cope. Didion describes the sudden onset of her daughter's illness as occurring during the period of blue nights - the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice.
Blue Nights was a rich and textured look at the years in their early marriage living in southern California working on their careers and their decision to have a child. Didion vividly recalls the telephone call she and her husband recieved informing them that there was a beautiful baby girl waiting for them at the hospital. In a few days their beautiful baby daughter, Quintana Roo, became part of the Dunne household. Those early days are seamlessly told touching on many of the issues of parenting, including memories of Didion's own childhood interspersed with many vivid snapshots of Quintana's childhood in Malibu, including a lot of Quintana's poetry. There are the recollections of the many trips taken as a family, some work-related, others personal. The memoir opens with Joan Didion recalling her memories from Quintana Roo's wedding on what would have been her first anniversary had she lived.
If we have come to appreciate anything about the writing of Joan Didion, it certainly is her unflinching ability to put all of her doubts, fears, misgivings, grief and sadness on paper for all to see. At times it is almost too raw in its telling. In this memoir, Didion comes to terms with her feelings of loss as she weaves in her fears of aging. This was a beautiful book and a lovely tribute to Quintana Roo.
"In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when twilights turn long and blue."
"The French call this time of day 'I'heure bleue.' To the English it was 'the gloaming.'"
Blue Nights was a rich and textured look at the years in their early marriage living in southern California working on their careers and their decision to have a child. Didion vividly recalls the telephone call she and her husband recieved informing them that there was a beautiful baby girl waiting for them at the hospital. In a few days their beautiful baby daughter, Quintana Roo, became part of the Dunne household. Those early days are seamlessly told touching on many of the issues of parenting, including memories of Didion's own childhood interspersed with many vivid snapshots of Quintana's childhood in Malibu, including a lot of Quintana's poetry. There are the recollections of the many trips taken as a family, some work-related, others personal. The memoir opens with Joan Didion recalling her memories from Quintana Roo's wedding on what would have been her first anniversary had she lived.
If we have come to appreciate anything about the writing of Joan Didion, it certainly is her unflinching ability to put all of her doubts, fears, misgivings, grief and sadness on paper for all to see. At times it is almost too raw in its telling. In this memoir, Didion comes to terms with her feelings of loss as she weaves in her fears of aging. This was a beautiful book and a lovely tribute to Quintana Roo.
Read
May 9, 2017I had two contrary reactions while reading this book. The first: this is all just too private for publication. Didion, a sad, frail woman, grieving for all her lost friends and especially for her husband and daughter, feels compelled to torment herself with a detailed analysis of all the occasions when she may have failed as a parent, all the occasions when she thinks that she missed what her daughter was trying to tell her. Each photograph or memento which she describes becomes the occasion for another another lash of the whip. The reader is screaming "stop" by half way through. Children survive in spite of, not because of, their parents. There are no perfect parents. My second reaction: this is just too beautiful not to be published. She may feel that her writing style has become diminished by age but I found it still quite remarkable. Her efforts at being searingly honest with herself are also impressive, accompanied as they are by her seeming ignorance of the more basic difficulties of most people's lives. I'm glad I read this elegant testament.
January 15, 2012
well. this was a huge disappointment. i loved the year of magical thinking, didion's memoir about the unexpected & sudden death of her husband, to which blue nights will inevitably be compared. the most positive thing i can say about blue nights is that its length (around 180 pages) & ginormous font make it a quick read.
this book is a mishmash memoir about the death of didion's adopted daughter quintana & didion's inability to come to terms with her own aging. the two topics don't mesh well & the incomprehensible leaping back & forth saps each story of its own momentum. didion also employed this weird writerly device of obsessive repetition--stories about her daughter's early years, something the doctor said as quintana was dying in the ICU, didion's observations of what quintana wore to be married in--which functioned to drain the emotional resonance from the story. if an editor excised every repetitive phrase from the book, you might seriously be left with about twenty pages. that's not even an exaggeration. it's so constant, it almost reads like a picture book for infants.
& personally, i was very put off by the passage in which didion goes on & on & ON about a mansion that she & her husband bought in brentwood when quintana was twelve years old. this segued into reminisces about quintana's adoption, & how the couple's wealthy friends showered them in sixty various linen infant dresses, each of which had to be washed & hung out to dry by hand by their capable undocumented spanish-speaking maid. in this turned into flashbacks about vacationing in a villa in the south of france, attended to by natasha richardson, & that turned into didion's recollections of natasha richardson's death from a head injury while skiing. didion writes over & over again, "tasha didn't deserve this," which may be true, but the corollary to such a statement is that someone out there DOES deserve to die from a head injury while skiing. it's just one of those facile, bland things people say when faced with an unexpected death, & while i can perhaps give a person a pass on not knowing what to say while they are actually standing in the ICU staring down the barrel of the death of a loved one, i do expect a bit more from a professional writer who has been publishing consistently for over forty years & had a whole team of editors at her disposal while putting this book together.
back to the mansion & the linen dresses, etc. didion remarks that some people might hear this story & assume that quintana's childhood was one of privilege. didion flips out at this point & writes, "privilege is an accusation. privilege is an insult. how dare you suggest that my family is privileged? how dare you suggest that my daughter's childhood wasn't normal?"
i got into a HUGE ARGUMENT with a friend about this, because i think that this passage was incredibly tone-deaf & narcissistic, & that it also functioned to use grief & mourning to justify the normalcy of what is indeed a very privileged lifestyle. & i thought that was actually an insult to quintana's memory. after all, this is joan didion. there is NO WAY that suggestions that the topics she writes about tend to reflect a privileged & inaccessible lifestyle are new to her. she's been writing about swanning around europe on yachts & posh dinner parties with movie stars on the beaches of malibu for decades. why attempt to argue the point that somehow, because this is mornal for her, that it is by definition not privilege, & especially why try to cloak it in the disingenuous mantle of protecting the innocence of one's dead daughter? it struck me as incredibly tacky.
my friend (the child of two wealthy lawyers, i should note--class-privileged enough himself to have all kinds of snippy remarks to level at german opera & oxfords from joseph a. bank) railed against my lack of "empathy" & basically insisted that i was a terrible person for having an ideological worldview that didn't crumble at the first sign of someone going through a rough time. i insist that who we are when we are angry or grieving or otherwise not at the top of our game is who we ACTUALLY are, & if we're going to expose ourselves as classist snobs then, then we are classist snobs & no amount of grief will change that. & that even the wealthy would do well to remember that EVERYONE (if they are fortunate enough to form close human bonds & stay alive for a while) experiences the death of a loved one. i have, & i hope that if i started getting up on my high horse about how no one knows the suffering i've seen, someone would have taken me aside & said, "dude, i know you're hurtin', but you're getting a little tacky. dial down the desdemona routine a little."
& i won't even get into didion's fears of aging, which mostly revolve around refusing to gain weight & lamenting a pair of four-inch stack heels that she's unlikely to ever wear again due to balance/nerve issues. dare i say that more than a few people who died young would have been more than happy to trade the glamorous shoes for a few extra decades of life. perspective? it's never been didion's strong suit.
this book is a mishmash memoir about the death of didion's adopted daughter quintana & didion's inability to come to terms with her own aging. the two topics don't mesh well & the incomprehensible leaping back & forth saps each story of its own momentum. didion also employed this weird writerly device of obsessive repetition--stories about her daughter's early years, something the doctor said as quintana was dying in the ICU, didion's observations of what quintana wore to be married in--which functioned to drain the emotional resonance from the story. if an editor excised every repetitive phrase from the book, you might seriously be left with about twenty pages. that's not even an exaggeration. it's so constant, it almost reads like a picture book for infants.
& personally, i was very put off by the passage in which didion goes on & on & ON about a mansion that she & her husband bought in brentwood when quintana was twelve years old. this segued into reminisces about quintana's adoption, & how the couple's wealthy friends showered them in sixty various linen infant dresses, each of which had to be washed & hung out to dry by hand by their capable undocumented spanish-speaking maid. in this turned into flashbacks about vacationing in a villa in the south of france, attended to by natasha richardson, & that turned into didion's recollections of natasha richardson's death from a head injury while skiing. didion writes over & over again, "tasha didn't deserve this," which may be true, but the corollary to such a statement is that someone out there DOES deserve to die from a head injury while skiing. it's just one of those facile, bland things people say when faced with an unexpected death, & while i can perhaps give a person a pass on not knowing what to say while they are actually standing in the ICU staring down the barrel of the death of a loved one, i do expect a bit more from a professional writer who has been publishing consistently for over forty years & had a whole team of editors at her disposal while putting this book together.
back to the mansion & the linen dresses, etc. didion remarks that some people might hear this story & assume that quintana's childhood was one of privilege. didion flips out at this point & writes, "privilege is an accusation. privilege is an insult. how dare you suggest that my family is privileged? how dare you suggest that my daughter's childhood wasn't normal?"
i got into a HUGE ARGUMENT with a friend about this, because i think that this passage was incredibly tone-deaf & narcissistic, & that it also functioned to use grief & mourning to justify the normalcy of what is indeed a very privileged lifestyle. & i thought that was actually an insult to quintana's memory. after all, this is joan didion. there is NO WAY that suggestions that the topics she writes about tend to reflect a privileged & inaccessible lifestyle are new to her. she's been writing about swanning around europe on yachts & posh dinner parties with movie stars on the beaches of malibu for decades. why attempt to argue the point that somehow, because this is mornal for her, that it is by definition not privilege, & especially why try to cloak it in the disingenuous mantle of protecting the innocence of one's dead daughter? it struck me as incredibly tacky.
my friend (the child of two wealthy lawyers, i should note--class-privileged enough himself to have all kinds of snippy remarks to level at german opera & oxfords from joseph a. bank) railed against my lack of "empathy" & basically insisted that i was a terrible person for having an ideological worldview that didn't crumble at the first sign of someone going through a rough time. i insist that who we are when we are angry or grieving or otherwise not at the top of our game is who we ACTUALLY are, & if we're going to expose ourselves as classist snobs then, then we are classist snobs & no amount of grief will change that. & that even the wealthy would do well to remember that EVERYONE (if they are fortunate enough to form close human bonds & stay alive for a while) experiences the death of a loved one. i have, & i hope that if i started getting up on my high horse about how no one knows the suffering i've seen, someone would have taken me aside & said, "dude, i know you're hurtin', but you're getting a little tacky. dial down the desdemona routine a little."
& i won't even get into didion's fears of aging, which mostly revolve around refusing to gain weight & lamenting a pair of four-inch stack heels that she's unlikely to ever wear again due to balance/nerve issues. dare i say that more than a few people who died young would have been more than happy to trade the glamorous shoes for a few extra decades of life. perspective? it's never been didion's strong suit.
June 16, 2022
joan didion stop making me cry challenge
March 20, 2015
In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue…you pass a window, you walk to Central Park, you find yourself swimming in the color blue…over the course of an hour or so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades…
As I type this, I wonder if I'd be so lucky as to come across a blue night tonight; the tranquil sight of a sky so clear, yet so blue. Deep blue. And yet Blue Nights mean the opposite of brightness, "the inevitability of the fading." There is something about the way in which Joan Didion writes that forces you to listen to her lugubrious melody, for she does write in notes. And lines. And aesthetics. Her meddlesome prose which interposes narrative with questions, questions with thoughts, thoughts with research. She makes ordinary contemplations extraordinary. I found myself reading this book at night, in one sitting, cover to cover, holding my breath and wondering whether it was too disheartening of a read to try and tackle before going to bed.
Still, I listened. Blue Nights is a candid reflection on death, motherhood, illness, and loss of an only daughter. Though I wouldn't recommend reading this before reading The Year of Magical Thinking, wherein Didion deals with the loss of her husband, business partner, writing soulmate and more. You read her books and you understand the life and times of the American writer most people only dream of becoming, you see snippets of the behind-the-scenes life of the woman who penned numerous books and memoirs, as well as screenplays with her husband. Mostly, you see a mother's pain as she remembers the daughter who passed at such a young age. (By the way, if you've read Isabel Allende's memoir, Paula, you will enjoy the similar themes of love, death, and remembrance:
What remained until now was unfamiliar, what I recognize in the photographs but failed to see at the time they were taken, are the startling depths and shallows of her expressions, the quicksilver changes of mood.
Whenever Didion was working on a book, her husband said, she stayed up until about three in the morning, had a drink, and read some poetry before going to bed; T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, W.H. Auden, you name it. You see the poetry in her writing: the repetition, the ordinariness bestowed upon the reader in a poetic fashion, the wordplay. This is why you read Didion. You also read knowing that there will be tons of questions she'll ask of herself, she will challenge herself on the page, she will involve you the reader, she will show why memoir is thought-provoking and universal in its approach:
My cognitive confidence seems to have vanished altogether. Even the correct stance for telling you this, the ways to describe what is happening to me, the attitude, the tone, the very words, now elude my grasp.
When her daughter Quintana was younger, Didion always made her lunch the night before. This is how her husband described the lunch in his wedding toast to their daughter:"little sandwiches with their crusts cut off, cut into four triangular pieces…homemade fried chicken with little salt and pepper shakers…stemmed strawberries, with sour cream and brown sugar." She was particular in life, you see her do the same as she reflects on death. In each vignette-driven chapter, she seems to contemplate life through death, making sense of all that is good, so that one doesn't die while still alive. Though this seems odd, it is a concept easy to grasp. With this memoir, she does what her entire family seems to have done at every downturn in life: embrace life's experiences through the written word. As I sit here contemplating this, I only wish I'd seen the one-person play she wrote for The Year of Magical Thinking.
She was seventy-five years old when she wrote this, one of few memoirists who pen the present tense with such poise, placing you right in the middle of it all with simplicity and ease, that you're viewing a picture of Sophia Loren with her, Loren is "sitting on a gilt chair, wearing a silk turban and smoking a cigarette, achingly polished, forever soignée," and you're thinking, what's the point? But this is pure Didion style, she will get to the point in an oblique fashion.
When we lose that sense of possible we lose it fast.
January 31, 2022
in the year of magical thinking, joan didion explores the grief of losing her husband john, who died suddenly at the dinner table while her daughter quintana lay in hospital. in blue nights, didion explores the grief of losing quintana, who passed away only a few months later.
blue nights serves as a continuation of didion’s reckoning with grief, another instalment of her trying to make sense of life and death - two subjects which are, by their very nature, nonsensical. like with every didion, she doesn’t lecture, she doesn’t preach, she doesn’t claim to know any absolute truths, she simply reflects on her own personal experiences, which she always shares with her trademark intelligence and emotional brevity.
hand in hand with grief, the predominant theme of this book centres on loss: the loss of her daughter, the loss of memories, the loss that accompanies ageing - or more simply, the loss of time. didion struggles to accept the finality of ageing: the increasing frailty, the concern of others, but more specifically to her case, the loneliness of outliving those closest to you, of not knowing who to write down as your emergency contact at the hospital.
didion provides searingly honest musings on parenthood and questions her own efficacy as a mother. much of the book is spent with didion desperately sifting through her memories, grasping onto the flashes of what she can remember from quintana’s childhood, which she analyses to almost the same degree as her usual essay subjects. as a mother, was there anything she could’ve done differently? did she ever really know her daughter? can a parent ever truly know their child, or are there parts of them that will forever remain unknown?
the issue of distance remains didion’s most popular critique, and blue nights is possibly her most distant work yet. however, to me, the distance feels warranted, as it seems that didion can only make sense of such debilitating loss by examining it from afar. ‘blue nights’ is beautiful and tragic, and is a stunning tribute from a mother to her daughter.
blue nights serves as a continuation of didion’s reckoning with grief, another instalment of her trying to make sense of life and death - two subjects which are, by their very nature, nonsensical. like with every didion, she doesn’t lecture, she doesn’t preach, she doesn’t claim to know any absolute truths, she simply reflects on her own personal experiences, which she always shares with her trademark intelligence and emotional brevity.
hand in hand with grief, the predominant theme of this book centres on loss: the loss of her daughter, the loss of memories, the loss that accompanies ageing - or more simply, the loss of time. didion struggles to accept the finality of ageing: the increasing frailty, the concern of others, but more specifically to her case, the loneliness of outliving those closest to you, of not knowing who to write down as your emergency contact at the hospital.
didion provides searingly honest musings on parenthood and questions her own efficacy as a mother. much of the book is spent with didion desperately sifting through her memories, grasping onto the flashes of what she can remember from quintana’s childhood, which she analyses to almost the same degree as her usual essay subjects. as a mother, was there anything she could’ve done differently? did she ever really know her daughter? can a parent ever truly know their child, or are there parts of them that will forever remain unknown?
the issue of distance remains didion’s most popular critique, and blue nights is possibly her most distant work yet. however, to me, the distance feels warranted, as it seems that didion can only make sense of such debilitating loss by examining it from afar. ‘blue nights’ is beautiful and tragic, and is a stunning tribute from a mother to her daughter.
May 23, 2024
I fear 'just let me be in the ground' will haunt me forever
Read
June 12, 2022I loved this even more than The Year of Magical Thinking. Special shout-out to the goodreads reviews of this book that imply (and sometimes state) that it’s “not sad enough”—they gave me my first true, belly-deep laugh in weeks
Read
December 1, 2017A brief yet heart-aching, poetic insight of grief relating the death of Didion's adult daughter Quintana.
It's in the blue nights that the questions, the grappling for answers plague us. As Didion explains this
'Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, "the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning"
It's in the blue nights that the questions, the grappling for answers plague us. As Didion explains this
'Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, "the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning"
April 16, 2017
My first work by Didion, this is a follow up to The Year of Magical Thinking, where Didion wrote about the loss of her husband. This concerns the loss of Didion’s adopted daughter Quintana Roo (in 2005 at 39), not long after the death of her husband. Whilst Didion does cover the adoption of her daughter and some of her earlier life, but she also goes on to relate the effects of aging and her reflections on them.
Didion has worked with words for a living and she is good with them. Her ability to produce descriptive writing is obvious illustrated by this example relating to what would have been Quintana’s seventh wedding anniversary;
“Seven years ago today we took the leis from the florist’s boxes and shook the water in which they were packed onto the grass … The white peacock spread his fan. The organ sounded. She wove white stephanotis into the thick braid that hung down her back. She dropped a tulle veil over her head and the stephanotis loosened and fell. The plumeria blossom ..”
Yet, there is no description of Quintana Roo at all, and as the book continues the subject becomes the failure to address the certainties of growing old, illness and death, although the way Didion realises this is a way particular to her:
“One day we are looking at the Magnum photograph of Sophia Loren at the Christian Dior show in Paris in 1968 and thinking yes, it could be me, I could wear that dress, I was in Paris that year; a blink of the eye later we are in one or another doctor’s office being told what has already gone wrong, why we will never again wear the red suede sandals with the four-inch heels, never again wear the gold hoop earrings, the enamelled beads, never now wear the dress Sophia Loren is wearing.”
It is almost as though the subject changes as the book goes on; although Didion does keep coming back to a quote that is repeated throughout the book, “When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children.”
The memoir is haunting and given the series events this is not surprising:
“Could you have seen, had you been walking on Amsterdam Avenue and caught sight of the bridal party that day, how utterly unprepared the mother of the bride was to accept what would happen before the year 2003 had even ended? The father of the bride dead at his own dinner table? The bride herself in an induced coma, breathing only on a respirator not expected by the doctors in the intensive care to live the night? The first in a cascade of medical crises that would end twenty months later with her death.”
As one reviewer has pointed out this is a memoir more about regret than grief, but Didion is always quotable and has some interesting things to say about aging and the way it suddenly seems to be there, as if we had not realised it was going to happen.
It is a powerful memoir with some interesting reflections on aging, but I was never quite sure what it was designed to be.
Didion has worked with words for a living and she is good with them. Her ability to produce descriptive writing is obvious illustrated by this example relating to what would have been Quintana’s seventh wedding anniversary;
“Seven years ago today we took the leis from the florist’s boxes and shook the water in which they were packed onto the grass … The white peacock spread his fan. The organ sounded. She wove white stephanotis into the thick braid that hung down her back. She dropped a tulle veil over her head and the stephanotis loosened and fell. The plumeria blossom ..”
Yet, there is no description of Quintana Roo at all, and as the book continues the subject becomes the failure to address the certainties of growing old, illness and death, although the way Didion realises this is a way particular to her:
“One day we are looking at the Magnum photograph of Sophia Loren at the Christian Dior show in Paris in 1968 and thinking yes, it could be me, I could wear that dress, I was in Paris that year; a blink of the eye later we are in one or another doctor’s office being told what has already gone wrong, why we will never again wear the red suede sandals with the four-inch heels, never again wear the gold hoop earrings, the enamelled beads, never now wear the dress Sophia Loren is wearing.”
It is almost as though the subject changes as the book goes on; although Didion does keep coming back to a quote that is repeated throughout the book, “When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children.”
The memoir is haunting and given the series events this is not surprising:
“Could you have seen, had you been walking on Amsterdam Avenue and caught sight of the bridal party that day, how utterly unprepared the mother of the bride was to accept what would happen before the year 2003 had even ended? The father of the bride dead at his own dinner table? The bride herself in an induced coma, breathing only on a respirator not expected by the doctors in the intensive care to live the night? The first in a cascade of medical crises that would end twenty months later with her death.”
As one reviewer has pointed out this is a memoir more about regret than grief, but Didion is always quotable and has some interesting things to say about aging and the way it suddenly seems to be there, as if we had not realised it was going to happen.
It is a powerful memoir with some interesting reflections on aging, but I was never quite sure what it was designed to be.
December 11, 2019
The scuttlebutt about Blue Nights is that it's really different from Didion's other work, and that is true. But it's not different in a bad way! Of the Didion books I've read, this struck me as the most poetic: Certain evocative phrases are imbued with significance and repeated throughout the text; I thought this was beautiful and effective and gave the book an almost obsessive quality that was completely appropriate. I'd been under the impression that Blue Nights was about Didion's daughter in the way
The Year of Magical Thinking
was about Didion's husband, and certainly Quintana plays a large role in this memoir. But it's also a broader meditation on mortality, and for me it worked on every level. I couldn't put it down, read it in a day, and was totally devastated. It's sad to think this may be the last book of new material we will ever see from Didion, but if that's the case she has done herself proud and we should all be grateful. I know I am.
November 23, 2011
Well, it's probably blasphemy to say this, and I did give this book the highest possible rating, but some of Didion's stylistic methods: the lists, the questions, the coy mingling of abstract and concrete, were showing here. They felt like tricks rather than fluid means of transcending the personal and reaching the universal. I actually got annoyed with the narrator when she couldn't seem to answer her own interminable questions when the answers seemed obvious to me. Of course, if your mother has chronic migraine, carries a presumptive diagnosis of MS, looks frail, writes about chaos and the meaninglessness of the universe, and your parents take you with them around the world to movie sets and agents' offices, you may well become precocious, feel as if it is your job to take care of them, and develop your own sense that the universe is meaningless and chaotic. Is this really mysterious? You may see the randomness lurking in the choice/adoption fable meant to reassure you that you were fated to be with your adoptive parents. How could you not ask "what if you weren't home when the doctor called to offer me to you," etc., when your mother asks these sorts of questions in her writing all the time? How can Didion not see how much Quintana probably wanted to be a writer like Mom and Dad?
Didion approaches and then darts away from deeper understanding of her daughter's and her own psychology. Some of the montage/collage -- the movement from contemplating her daughter's psychology to her own physical problems of aging felt narcissistic. Can she only think about her daughter empathetically for so long before she has to shift focus to herself? I understand that the larger themes are mortality and the unwillingness to acknowledge the passage of time, etc., etc., but there were still so many moments when I wanted to pin the narrator down to staying in the moment with her daughter before getting back to herself.
Didion also throws around psychiatric diagnoses applied at various times to Quintana as if they explain her but it feels cruel to apply a diagnosis so often used to discredit intense women, and so often lacking in scientific validity -- borderline personality disorder -- to describe her daughter. It doesn't explain at this point, it only discredits. I haven't yet quite gotten to the end of the book but it's still not clear to me what the connection is between these psychiatric diagnoses and her daughter's final physical illness. Maybe Didion is relying on the reader to connect some of these dots, but for some reason this book felt more coy and evasive than her other works. Are we being asked to forgive her? Tell her that whatever happened with her daughter isn't her fault? Or condemn and forgive her at the same time? Is the subject matter still too fraught, too painful, the relationship too unresolved? Am I projecting here my own feelings about my mother and her blindnesses to me? I feel as if I'm being too hard on Didion -- What could be more horrible than losing your husband and your daughter within a few months of one another, in the midst of losing your own physical and cognitive bearings? Didion is brave to even broach these subjects, and even when she's not at the top of her game, she's better than virtually everyone else writing memoir. I relished every word of this book even as I sometimes wanted to shake the narrator.
Didion approaches and then darts away from deeper understanding of her daughter's and her own psychology. Some of the montage/collage -- the movement from contemplating her daughter's psychology to her own physical problems of aging felt narcissistic. Can she only think about her daughter empathetically for so long before she has to shift focus to herself? I understand that the larger themes are mortality and the unwillingness to acknowledge the passage of time, etc., etc., but there were still so many moments when I wanted to pin the narrator down to staying in the moment with her daughter before getting back to herself.
Didion also throws around psychiatric diagnoses applied at various times to Quintana as if they explain her but it feels cruel to apply a diagnosis so often used to discredit intense women, and so often lacking in scientific validity -- borderline personality disorder -- to describe her daughter. It doesn't explain at this point, it only discredits. I haven't yet quite gotten to the end of the book but it's still not clear to me what the connection is between these psychiatric diagnoses and her daughter's final physical illness. Maybe Didion is relying on the reader to connect some of these dots, but for some reason this book felt more coy and evasive than her other works. Are we being asked to forgive her? Tell her that whatever happened with her daughter isn't her fault? Or condemn and forgive her at the same time? Is the subject matter still too fraught, too painful, the relationship too unresolved? Am I projecting here my own feelings about my mother and her blindnesses to me? I feel as if I'm being too hard on Didion -- What could be more horrible than losing your husband and your daughter within a few months of one another, in the midst of losing your own physical and cognitive bearings? Didion is brave to even broach these subjects, and even when she's not at the top of her game, she's better than virtually everyone else writing memoir. I relished every word of this book even as I sometimes wanted to shake the narrator.
April 25, 2025
I'm in tears again. What a beautiful reflection on motherhood, grief, and the self. Didion has a way with words and such a way of tugging at your heartstrings. The book is filled with longing and an ongoing sense of grief which interpolates with moments of hopefulness and strength. So much raw emotion has gone into this and you truly feel a sense of emotional intimacy with Didion herself. Likely one of my favourite books I've read in my lifetime so far, definitely my favourite by Didion book. Despite my lack of experience in terms of motherhood and such, there is so much that remains relevant that one can resonate with. This book remains timeless, and a wonderful capsule of a blue night.
October 13, 2025
i've always found class to be the most interesting (and prominent) thread in joan didion's oeuvre. the perceived glamor her work exudes—the reason she's considered a "literary it girl," the reason why her book covers are littered all over pinterest in artfully posed snapshots—is in so many ways the simple fact of her proximity to wealth.
and, also interestingly, in blue nights there's a defensive slant to the way didion writes about this glamor and wealth—the circle of socialite friends she cultivated in hollywood and new york, the film sets she jetted off to at the drop of a hat with her husband, the sixty designer dresses gifted to her adopted baby for the shower. didion is able to acknowledge that her daughter quintana's childhood wasn't ordinary, but, she argues, whose childhood is normal?
well, i can tell you most people did not grow up with twentieth-century fox on speed dial, with a mother who spoke the language of "mccardell dresses" and "blue-and-cream tweed chanel suits," with vacations in honolulu and saigon, with jet-setting filmmaker parents for whom money was no object.
blue nights attempts to grapple with the senseless and random tragedies of sudden death (and the health complications that may or may not precede those sudden deaths). i don't think anyone would earnestly argue that quintana's surgeries or ICU visits or her early death were easy, breezy, beautiful. didion is excellent at depicting the grueling anguish of dealing with loved ones moving through america's (base, broken) healthcare system. is this not proof, then, that the didion family deserves to be free of the icky word "privileged?"
well, no. unfortunately, health precarity is also experienced by working class people, the economically disenfranchised, people without any access to healthcare or cornell and berkeley's state-of-the-art facilities and top-line care. and, believe it or not, navigating hospitals, unexpected injury, and sudden surgeries is a lot more difficult when you don't have enough money for a mortgage, or a movie set, or a hotel suite overlooking hawaiian islands.
didion writes:
she bristles at the idea that the most privileged among us are also susceptible to senseless suffering. how can it be possible that quintana's idyllic malibu childhood was met by such a grisly end? is it because she was never privileged to begin with?
i sympathize with didion's grief, but her blindness to class remains one of the most unpleasant parts of reading her work. no, actually, "privilege" is not an opinion. privilege is tied to class status and class status is a scientific fact of the socioeconomic systems we've constructed to exploit people; the hard fact of that science is required to further this exploitation. this exploitation powers and sustains the lifestyles led by families like didion & co. that she bristles at the word—that holding "privilege" beside "unexpected suffering" produces a kind of confused cognitive dissonance throughout this little memoir—is further proof of her own economic preconceptions and of her incredible privilege.
she writes, “(One question: would you have called buying pastel linen dresses for Saigon a mark of 'privilege'? Or would you have called it more a mark of bone stupidity?)." i would call it both. because two things can be true. and nuance exists. i hope that helps.
there's a lot about this that didn't work for me. though i understand why didion made this stylistic choice, the near-constant repetition and paragraph breaks after a single sentence really began to grate.
in spite of that, didion is—as always—addictingly readable and what i did find powerful about this piece of nonfiction was the recurring theme of disability. this idea that those around us prone to health precarity, chronic illness, or physical and mental impairment are most vulnerable to misunderstanding and maltreatment by people in trusted positions of power is compelling. the fact that growing older raises critical questions about social safety nets is something low-income families have to learn a lot sooner than the didions of the world, who are allowed to reach this epiphany and then sell it as a manuscript to great acclaim, and to well-funded stage adaptations. funny how that works, huh? 3.5/5.
will i ever read something by didion that i rate a true 4 stars? we shall see.
and, also interestingly, in blue nights there's a defensive slant to the way didion writes about this glamor and wealth—the circle of socialite friends she cultivated in hollywood and new york, the film sets she jetted off to at the drop of a hat with her husband, the sixty designer dresses gifted to her adopted baby for the shower. didion is able to acknowledge that her daughter quintana's childhood wasn't ordinary, but, she argues, whose childhood is normal?
well, i can tell you most people did not grow up with twentieth-century fox on speed dial, with a mother who spoke the language of "mccardell dresses" and "blue-and-cream tweed chanel suits," with vacations in honolulu and saigon, with jet-setting filmmaker parents for whom money was no object.
blue nights attempts to grapple with the senseless and random tragedies of sudden death (and the health complications that may or may not precede those sudden deaths). i don't think anyone would earnestly argue that quintana's surgeries or ICU visits or her early death were easy, breezy, beautiful. didion is excellent at depicting the grueling anguish of dealing with loved ones moving through america's (base, broken) healthcare system. is this not proof, then, that the didion family deserves to be free of the icky word "privileged?"
well, no. unfortunately, health precarity is also experienced by working class people, the economically disenfranchised, people without any access to healthcare or cornell and berkeley's state-of-the-art facilities and top-line care. and, believe it or not, navigating hospitals, unexpected injury, and sudden surgeries is a lot more difficult when you don't have enough money for a mortgage, or a movie set, or a hotel suite overlooking hawaiian islands.
didion writes:
“Privilege” is something else. “Privilege” is a judgment.“Privilege” is an opinion. “Privilege” is an accusation. “Privilege” remains an area to which—when I think of what she endured, when I consider what came later—I will not easily cop.
she bristles at the idea that the most privileged among us are also susceptible to senseless suffering. how can it be possible that quintana's idyllic malibu childhood was met by such a grisly end? is it because she was never privileged to begin with?
i sympathize with didion's grief, but her blindness to class remains one of the most unpleasant parts of reading her work. no, actually, "privilege" is not an opinion. privilege is tied to class status and class status is a scientific fact of the socioeconomic systems we've constructed to exploit people; the hard fact of that science is required to further this exploitation. this exploitation powers and sustains the lifestyles led by families like didion & co. that she bristles at the word—that holding "privilege" beside "unexpected suffering" produces a kind of confused cognitive dissonance throughout this little memoir—is further proof of her own economic preconceptions and of her incredible privilege.
she writes, “(One question: would you have called buying pastel linen dresses for Saigon a mark of 'privilege'? Or would you have called it more a mark of bone stupidity?)." i would call it both. because two things can be true. and nuance exists. i hope that helps.
there's a lot about this that didn't work for me. though i understand why didion made this stylistic choice, the near-constant repetition and paragraph breaks after a single sentence really began to grate.
in spite of that, didion is—as always—addictingly readable and what i did find powerful about this piece of nonfiction was the recurring theme of disability. this idea that those around us prone to health precarity, chronic illness, or physical and mental impairment are most vulnerable to misunderstanding and maltreatment by people in trusted positions of power is compelling. the fact that growing older raises critical questions about social safety nets is something low-income families have to learn a lot sooner than the didions of the world, who are allowed to reach this epiphany and then sell it as a manuscript to great acclaim, and to well-funded stage adaptations. funny how that works, huh? 3.5/5.
will i ever read something by didion that i rate a true 4 stars? we shall see.
January 9, 2022
Click here to hear my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive.
September 13, 2025
Minunat scris! Durerea ițită de după icnetul frazelor scurte, poticnite, minimaliste, deposedate (unele) de verb, de predicat. Repetiții și reveniri ca niște incantații, mantre. Durerea mușcată de limbă. Limba înghițită de durere. Și un substrat de părere de rău pentru sine însăși.
Admirabil, în memorialistica lui Joan Didion, este și acest detaliu: nu-i este rușine să-i fie dor de femeia-care-a-fost ori să-și exhibe în ochii cititorului teama paralizantă că, într-o zi, nici ea nu va mai fi. După ce a pierdut Totul, J.D. și-a dat seama că (scandalos pentru unii, apologeți ai doliului definitiv, obligatoriu) ceea ce i-a mai rămas — deopotrivă: dar, har & pedeapsă — sunt scrisul și faptul că trăiește.
Dragostea ei de viață, altădată impetuoasă - așa ciobită și reconstituită arheologic cum îi este acum, și spaima - mărturisită prin risipă de eufemisme și ocolișuri - de posibilul Nimic de apoi…
Aș fi citit și 500 de pagini, și mai multe, compuse în acest stil economicos, în acest ritm al du-te-vino-ului între trecut și prezent! Didion, făcându-și planuri de trecut, pentru a nu fi nevoită să privească în ochi viitorul, nici chiar prezentul.
Scriitură de o eleganță zdrobitoare, de care Didion se agață pentru a se simți utilă sieși, spiralând în jurul temei morții, atentă la pașii pe care-i face, ca într-un vals executat pe buza prăpastiei, sub amenințarea hăului.
___________________________
P.S. Am remarcat în “recenziile” anglofone la această carte de “memorii” insinuându-se otrava stângismului de modă nouă, stalinismul corectitudinii politice, ce infectează recent mai toate opiniile exprimate public. Disprețul nedisimulat al acestor coate-goale de pe GR pentru “albitatea” lui Didion, pentru “privilegiile” ei de “castă”, de clasă și de rasă, influențează - corupe - părerile despre carte ale dobitocilor. De parcă suferința pierderii (+ spaima de bătrânețe) nu ar mai suferință dacă ești alb, catolic, faimos & înstărit… Nerozii ăștia au “confiscat” până si dreptul la durere, legând-o strict de culoarea pielii sau de gen. Dezgustător!
Admirabil, în memorialistica lui Joan Didion, este și acest detaliu: nu-i este rușine să-i fie dor de femeia-care-a-fost ori să-și exhibe în ochii cititorului teama paralizantă că, într-o zi, nici ea nu va mai fi. După ce a pierdut Totul, J.D. și-a dat seama că (scandalos pentru unii, apologeți ai doliului definitiv, obligatoriu) ceea ce i-a mai rămas — deopotrivă: dar, har & pedeapsă — sunt scrisul și faptul că trăiește.
Dragostea ei de viață, altădată impetuoasă - așa ciobită și reconstituită arheologic cum îi este acum, și spaima - mărturisită prin risipă de eufemisme și ocolișuri - de posibilul Nimic de apoi…
Aș fi citit și 500 de pagini, și mai multe, compuse în acest stil economicos, în acest ritm al du-te-vino-ului între trecut și prezent! Didion, făcându-și planuri de trecut, pentru a nu fi nevoită să privească în ochi viitorul, nici chiar prezentul.
Scriitură de o eleganță zdrobitoare, de care Didion se agață pentru a se simți utilă sieși, spiralând în jurul temei morții, atentă la pașii pe care-i face, ca într-un vals executat pe buza prăpastiei, sub amenințarea hăului.
___________________________
P.S. Am remarcat în “recenziile” anglofone la această carte de “memorii” insinuându-se otrava stângismului de modă nouă, stalinismul corectitudinii politice, ce infectează recent mai toate opiniile exprimate public. Disprețul nedisimulat al acestor coate-goale de pe GR pentru “albitatea” lui Didion, pentru “privilegiile” ei de “castă”, de clasă și de rasă, influențează - corupe - părerile despre carte ale dobitocilor. De parcă suferința pierderii (+ spaima de bătrânețe) nu ar mai suferință dacă ești alb, catolic, faimos & înstărit… Nerozii ăștia au “confiscat” până si dreptul la durere, legând-o strict de culoarea pielii sau de gen. Dezgustător!
January 5, 2022
did i just found my favourite book of the year? yes. is this the second book i've read this year? also yes.
i cant even begin to explain how much i loved this book. this was so beautifully done, of course, we are talking about THE joan didion, but i cant even believe how good of a book i just read.
i dont think theres a bigger pain than the one a mother feels when she loses her child, every chapter of this book is the proof of that. it truly felt like she put everything in here, and she did so in such a mesmerizing way. I've read some people's reviews saying this felt all over the place, but isnt that the point? how are you supposed to feel when something like this happens to you?
the way she kept repeating some phrases about q always made me tear up, but it was also one of my favourites things from the book.
something changed in me after this book, something about seeing such vulnerable and raw emotions did things to me.
what an incredible book.
i cant even begin to explain how much i loved this book. this was so beautifully done, of course, we are talking about THE joan didion, but i cant even believe how good of a book i just read.
i dont think theres a bigger pain than the one a mother feels when she loses her child, every chapter of this book is the proof of that. it truly felt like she put everything in here, and she did so in such a mesmerizing way. I've read some people's reviews saying this felt all over the place, but isnt that the point? how are you supposed to feel when something like this happens to you?
the way she kept repeating some phrases about q always made me tear up, but it was also one of my favourites things from the book.
something changed in me after this book, something about seeing such vulnerable and raw emotions did things to me.
what an incredible book.
December 30, 2022
It's hard to imagine what it took to write this. I see this both for its therapeutic value and for its Art. Her style has a stream of consciousness flow-you can feel her feeling her way through and processing her life experiences. I feel this is really what a memoir should be: a way of processing your life not just writing something that will become polished and done. She writes not just about death but life; not just about life but death. I have heard Didion described as holding back when what I actually feel about her is that she is the most vulnerable writer I've encountered. And this is what healing needs: to process the whole relationship. This was a more difficult read than The Year of Magical Thinking but possibly a greater achievement.
August 10, 2022
absolutely heartbreaking
February 9, 2017
"In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and rolling the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue."
-- Joan Didion, Blue Nights
It has been a decade since Joan Didion's daughter Quintana died. Joan Didion was 75 when she wrote this book. She wrote her first grief memoir The Year of Magical Thinking after her husband died in 2003. It dealt with her husband's death and her daughter's hospitalization (Quintana would later die in 2005 from pancreatitis. So, within about a year-and-a-half Didion would lose her husband and her daughter. Two deaths. Two books. The first primarily focuses on her husband's sudden death and her daughter's illness. The second focuses on her daughter and her own frailty.
Didion summarizes what she is after with this book in chapter 9:
"When I began writing these pages I believed their subject to be children, the ones we have and the ones we wish we had, the ways in which we depend on our children to depend on us, the ways in which we encourage them to remain children, the ways in which they remain more unknown to us than they do to their more casual acquaintances; the ways in which we remain equally opaque to them...
The ways in which our investments in each other remain to freighted ever to see the other clear.
The ways in which neither we nor they can bear to contemplate the death or illness or even aging of the other."
She then clarifies that what this novel became, however, was more "the refusal even to engage in such contemplation, this failure to confront the certainties of aging, illness, death."
This novel is better when she is using her knife to cut to the core of this failure, this fear, this inability to see people when they are here. This novel is genius when she is piercing the center of grief and exploring how grief is often the realization that memories often provide evidence to how unawake we were to the people we loved when it mattered, when they lived. How the fear of death also contains the seeds of knowledge. We begin to understand that those cherished memories of loved ones gone, will die with us. That with our own deaths those memories die forever. They vanish into the night. Our loved ones die twice.
This novel is weak, however, because at times it seems like a prose sorting of old memories. Like going through a loved ones box of sundries and remembering the whens, the whys, the hows. It is a bit scattered and while still good, it was just not great. It is also weak in her repetitions. I get what she was doing. The repetition of certain memories and phrases were like a mantra, a prayer, a devotion. It felt a little like Gertrude Stein, but lacked Stein's beauty or Didion's power. One of my least favorite of Didion's nonfiction.
-- Joan Didion, Blue Nights
It has been a decade since Joan Didion's daughter Quintana died. Joan Didion was 75 when she wrote this book. She wrote her first grief memoir The Year of Magical Thinking after her husband died in 2003. It dealt with her husband's death and her daughter's hospitalization (Quintana would later die in 2005 from pancreatitis. So, within about a year-and-a-half Didion would lose her husband and her daughter. Two deaths. Two books. The first primarily focuses on her husband's sudden death and her daughter's illness. The second focuses on her daughter and her own frailty.
Didion summarizes what she is after with this book in chapter 9:
"When I began writing these pages I believed their subject to be children, the ones we have and the ones we wish we had, the ways in which we depend on our children to depend on us, the ways in which we encourage them to remain children, the ways in which they remain more unknown to us than they do to their more casual acquaintances; the ways in which we remain equally opaque to them...
The ways in which our investments in each other remain to freighted ever to see the other clear.
The ways in which neither we nor they can bear to contemplate the death or illness or even aging of the other."
She then clarifies that what this novel became, however, was more "the refusal even to engage in such contemplation, this failure to confront the certainties of aging, illness, death."
This novel is better when she is using her knife to cut to the core of this failure, this fear, this inability to see people when they are here. This novel is genius when she is piercing the center of grief and exploring how grief is often the realization that memories often provide evidence to how unawake we were to the people we loved when it mattered, when they lived. How the fear of death also contains the seeds of knowledge. We begin to understand that those cherished memories of loved ones gone, will die with us. That with our own deaths those memories die forever. They vanish into the night. Our loved ones die twice.
This novel is weak, however, because at times it seems like a prose sorting of old memories. Like going through a loved ones box of sundries and remembering the whens, the whys, the hows. It is a bit scattered and while still good, it was just not great. It is also weak in her repetitions. I get what she was doing. The repetition of certain memories and phrases were like a mantra, a prayer, a devotion. It felt a little like Gertrude Stein, but lacked Stein's beauty or Didion's power. One of my least favorite of Didion's nonfiction.
April 3, 2023
I‘m so glad I read this book before I have children of my own. Otherwise, the closing lines of this book would have sent me to an early grave as well.
November 20, 2014
I wrote a review for this & the computer ate it. I haven't the heart to try to rewrite the whole thing. Suffice to say that this book was not as sad as The Year of Magical Thinking although I expected it to be harder to bear. To lose a husband is one thing, but to lose a child far, far worse. Thinking about my son dying makes me literally sick to my stomach. I expected to be cut to bits by this.
I wasn't, which is good for me but bad for the book. The tiny intimate details that made Magical Thinking so devastating aren't present here. Didion reiterates the same few stories - the Broken Man that Quintana was afraid of when she was little, the story they told her to explain her adoption, the conversation Didion had with a doctor while her daughter was literally dying in front of her. These stories seem to lose their potency for me through repetition. Didion admits that she's having trouble writing with the same flow and style that she used to, and sadly, it's not hard for the reader to tell.
I wasn't, which is good for me but bad for the book. The tiny intimate details that made Magical Thinking so devastating aren't present here. Didion reiterates the same few stories - the Broken Man that Quintana was afraid of when she was little, the story they told her to explain her adoption, the conversation Didion had with a doctor while her daughter was literally dying in front of her. These stories seem to lose their potency for me through repetition. Didion admits that she's having trouble writing with the same flow and style that she used to, and sadly, it's not hard for the reader to tell.
November 19, 2011
Would give it 3.5 stars if possible, or close to four. Didion has been my favorite writer for more than 20 years. This book is totally her, served raw. Only Joan Didion can get away with writing like Joan Didion. Otherwise, large parts of this book would be strangely embarrassing. I was struck many times by the lovely, forlorn quality of this book. But just as often, I was puzzled by her ability to withhold information, given that she is so singularly hailed as someone -- a journalist, in a way -- who cuts through the BS. She never really tells us what Quintana died of. (She gave us more medical information when writing about Quintana's health issues in "The Year of Magical Thinking.") She deliberately averts our attention from Quintana's medical records, but is free with her own.
Also, I think Didion tries and fails here to defend her own ideas of privilege and class when describing her domestic life over the last four decades. Not super rich, but not exactly of the people, either. A reader will likely spend some time looking up very rarefied brand names and botanical nomenclature. This Didion is the "neurasthenic Cher" a critic derided years ago. But I like this Didion too, and always have. Nobody parallel-parks a sentence like this woman. Nobody has this sort of precision.
"Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights" are not my most favorite Didion books; they are the ones that have received the most attention and sales. They are key parts of the puzzle. At some point, I'll get around to rating/reviewing her other works. Any excuse to go back and look through them. I always learn something new.
Also, I think Didion tries and fails here to defend her own ideas of privilege and class when describing her domestic life over the last four decades. Not super rich, but not exactly of the people, either. A reader will likely spend some time looking up very rarefied brand names and botanical nomenclature. This Didion is the "neurasthenic Cher" a critic derided years ago. But I like this Didion too, and always have. Nobody parallel-parks a sentence like this woman. Nobody has this sort of precision.
"Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights" are not my most favorite Didion books; they are the ones that have received the most attention and sales. They are key parts of the puzzle. At some point, I'll get around to rating/reviewing her other works. Any excuse to go back and look through them. I always learn something new.
November 7, 2011
I don't want to review this. Joan Didion knows exactly what the ding dang she's doing. She's still Joan Didion, still somewhat distant and removed from her subject matter, able to describe it all clearly, sometimes SO clearly it seems like she just floated through it all, invisible. I can't imagine her ever holding a baby, cooing it to sleep. She's Joan Didion! She's cool, she's California, she's wearing sunglasses, she's staring unsmiling into the camera. But the memories of Quintana that she returns to again and again in this book--the repetition is so effective; devastating, especially in the final chapter--are so full of tenderness and poignancy that there is no denying that she was (is) a mother the same as every mother, same as our own mothers. And that she's a human who is coming face-to-face with her own mortality.
I loved this. I feel unqualified to speak on it, not because I think I'm some lowly nobody (though duh I am) but because it feels cruel to rate it. This is JOAN DIDION WRITING ABOUT DEATH. You should read it. What else is there to say.
I loved this. I feel unqualified to speak on it, not because I think I'm some lowly nobody (though duh I am) but because it feels cruel to rate it. This is JOAN DIDION WRITING ABOUT DEATH. You should read it. What else is there to say.
May 1, 2019
Svanire.
Perdersi nel nulla: il verso di Keats che la spaventava.
Sbiadire come sbiadiscono le notti azzurre, andarsene come se ne va il fulgore.
Tornare nell’azzurro.
Ho visto con i miei occhi le porte della cattedrale sbarrate alle sei.
So cos’è che sto provando adesso.
So cos’è la fragilità, so cos’è la paura.
La paura non è per ciò che è andato perso.
Ciò che è andato perso è già murato in una parete.
Ciò che è andato perso è già chiuso dietro porte sbarrate.
La paura è per ciò che c’è ancora da perdere.
Potreste dire che non vedete cosa ci sia ancora da perdere.
Eppure non c’è giorno della sua vita in cui io non la veda.
Perdersi nel nulla: il verso di Keats che la spaventava.
Sbiadire come sbiadiscono le notti azzurre, andarsene come se ne va il fulgore.
Tornare nell’azzurro.
Ho visto con i miei occhi le porte della cattedrale sbarrate alle sei.
So cos’è che sto provando adesso.
So cos’è la fragilità, so cos’è la paura.
La paura non è per ciò che è andato perso.
Ciò che è andato perso è già murato in una parete.
Ciò che è andato perso è già chiuso dietro porte sbarrate.
La paura è per ciò che c’è ancora da perdere.
Potreste dire che non vedete cosa ci sia ancora da perdere.
Eppure non c’è giorno della sua vita in cui io non la veda.
September 6, 2024
my anti-depressants hated seeing me pick up this book. such a heartbreaking little read that beautifully describes different feelings of grief and mundane/unavoidable aspects of life
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