Play Book Tag discussion

As they sat at the dinner table in their NYC apartment, Joan's first hint that something was wrong was that her husband, John Dunne, had stopped talking. John had died of a massive coronary and Joan just couldn't comprehend that her husband of 40 years was gone. That this had happened just a few days after their only child, Quintana, was admitted to a hospital ICU, comatose and in septic shock was surreal. The twin tragedies threw Joan into year of 'magical thinking' in which she knew that John would be needing his shoes any moment now, that since it was 3 hours earlier in California maybe she could prevent his death in that 3 hours, or that john was waiting for her in their favorite neighborhood restaurant. Although Quintana would eventually survive her medical crisis, she would be in and out of hospitals for many months. As a mother, Joan felt that she could have somehow prevented her daughter's suffering. This book is a deeply personal account of Didion's struggle through the first year after her husband's death and the illness of her only child.

This sounds like a great read. Thanks for your review.

For some reason, everyone I know loved this memoir, and I didn't. I don't even remember what it was I didn't like about it, but I have been noticing that memoirs that focus on reaction to a death haven't really spoken to me. Maybe because I haven't experienced those emotions of loss as of yet.