"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
‘ I read it twice for pure delight.’ Guardian
‘Fast-paced, witty, inventive... “The Last Thing He Wanted” is a creation of high seriousness, a thriller composed with all the resources of a unique gift for imaginative literature.’ New York Review of Books
‘An impressive, fast-talking, hard-boiled, wise-cracking, tough-guy of a novel.’ Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday
PRAISE FOR THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING
'Her poetic writing has a spell-like charm that is profoundly affecting.' Observer
'This brave book maps a year...when the world flipped over to expose the underside of cool where things go bad.’ The Times
'The subject may be bleak, but her tender treatment makes it a book that we should all read.' Daily Mail
"It is 1984, a period, in Joan Didion's sweeping formulation of luridness, of counterfeit machismo, of 'striking and maintaining a certain kind of sentimental pose'. More specifically, it was a time when large quantities of lethal weaponry reached the Nicaraguan Contras with the connivance, but without the official sanction, of the American government...It is typical of Didion's approach to her theme that Elena McMahon, the out of work reporter who agrees to escort a shipment of anti personnel mines to a Caribbean island arrives on the remote jungle airstrip wearing a black silk shift. This novel, like its heroine's choice of travel wear, proclaims its classiness at once...Didion's language is as high toned as it is hip, an amalgam of journalistic and political jargons with pared down prose full of finely sprung rhythms, suggestive pauses and patterns of repetition and variation as artful and shapely as song...impractical as it may be, there really is nothing as becoming as black silk."
LUCY HUGHES HALLETT, 'Sunday Times'
"The centrality of 'The Last Thing He Wanted' is not a person, nor even an event, but the tone of the US in 1984. The technique of writing is, as usual, unique, an incantation with repetitions and rhythms to entrance the reader, meant to restore full weight to a language made weightless by misuse...I should perhaps also mention that I read it twice for pure delight before reading it for review."
VERONICA HORWELL,'Guardian'
"Fast paced, witty, inventive...'The Last Thing He Wanted 'is a creation of high seriousness, a thriller composed with all the resources of a unique gift for imaginative literature."
ELIZABETH HARDWICK,'New York Review of Books'
"Joan Didion's first novel for more than a decade, 'The Last Thing He Wanted' is by far her most secular and disenchanted. It is also close to her best."
BRIAN MORTON, 'TES'
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Book Description Hardback. Condition: Good. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine. Seller Inventory # GOR002163930
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Poor. 1st Edition. Ex-Library, light pencil marks, missing jacket. Ships from Berlin Bookshop bxn99. Seller Inventory # 10001969
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. First UK edition first printing of this stand alone literary thriller. There are two tiny dots of ink on the first colored free end page. Light toning to the pages. In near fine / near fine condition. Seller Inventory # 38012
Book Description Cloth. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First U.K. Edition. 227pp. Green endpapers. Black cloth w find gold lettering to spine. No wear to covers or spine. Binding square and sound. Illustrated DJ is clean, showing shallow bumping to bottom front edge. Octavo. Seller Inventory # 046395
Book Description Hardcover/Hardback. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First Edition. Journalist to arms dealer in one novel. Review copy with publisher's slip laid in. book. Seller Inventory # 45346
Book Description 1st edition, hardback, 227pp, edges browning, otherwise clean and tight, no inscriptions, Very Good / Very Good dustwrapper. wrapper has some light scratches on front panel, not price-clipped. ISBN: 0002240807. Seller Inventory # 34197
Book Description Condition: Good. Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00052483928